Class Summary for 2/18

Class on the 18^th of February started out with a discussion of Epicurean ethics. For the Epicurists pleasure is the foundation of ethics because they believe that every human and every living being looks to get away from pain while seeking pleasure. A big part of being able to accept this is re understanding understanding of you're own ego. Since people have been trained to feel bad for pleasure the discussion then covered how the Epicureans responded to this by saying there was no need to argue against it because it was self evident.

This is expanded upon by Cicero who said that all things good were pleasurable. The example he uses to illustrate this is music. He says that music is good, but only because it was pleasurable. If music was pleasurable it would cause pain, since there is no middle ground between pleasure for the Epicureans. If you music were not pleasurable it could not be considered a good since it was going against man's search for what was pleasurable.

The Epicureans also distinguished between different types of pleasures. They had the natural and necessary. The natural but unnecessary, and the unnatural an unnecessary. Something that would fall into the first category would be eating. Its a natural desire that wee eat and its something that is necessary for our survival. Something like sex would fall into the second category. Its a natural desire and necessary for the advance of the human race. But since it is not necessary for one person to survive. That idea led to a discussion in the class as to rather or not the Epicureans had the right view on what necessary. How could they say reproduction wasn't necessary even if it didn't help contribute to the survival of a human? The last category is unnatural and unnecessary; things like fame and power fell into this category. It was unnatural for someone to want more power or fame than they original had since they had a more minimalistic view of how people should live. “When a little is not enough, then nothing is enough,” according to this school of thought.

In regards to the anxiety and depression that life can bring they thought that this was caused by false beliefs of what people needed to be happy. If someone was living marginally, not desiring more than they should one would simply be happy naturally. One should try to find happiness in the material world, since Epicurean philosophy is based in atomist view point. So all happiness should be based in things you could sense.