A practitioner’s guide to hedonism (2007)
1843magazine.com
1843magazine.com
Actually: yeah, I just basically described contentedness. Though there is definitely a difference between contentedness and complacency.
There are however people who are satisfied and content with their life almost every day.
Happiness in this case probably comprises of a state of mind different of perceptual pleasure.
The various helenistic schools of philosophy were all searching for what constituted virtue. They were quite explicitly after what was good about life and how to organize life around that. The fact you can understand every every human motivation in hedonistic terms is no coincidence; it's the justification for the philosophy, the reason there was a school of hedonism.
"That is why the real Epicurus – in contrast to the crude sybarite invented by his detractors – denounced the rapidly rotting fruits of dissipation and excess. The constant pursuit of intense pleasures will in fact backfire, according to Epicurus, because it leads to the psychological hell of enslavement to unsatisfiable appetites. The would-be hedonist must take care to ensure that the pain of overreaching desire does not ruin his peace of mind and thereby defeat his original aim of securing a balance of pleasure over pain."
Hedonism refers to pursuing pleasures such as money, sex, food, luxury. Unless you want to play fast and loose with terms, an achievement such as becoming a veterinarian or winning a tennis championship or breaking a videogame speedrun record doesn't qualify.
Some words are tricky to fully define outside any ambiguity. Love and Game are good examples.
It makes far more sense to define those things by their external manifestations rather than by some final (and worse, sometimes even subconscious) motive.
Related to this: Instead of Hendonism, I am getting into Stoicism; of course adapting it to 'modern day'.
Still sounds like you might be getting a bit mystical with both the old and the new. You might want to play around with extreme spiritual skepticism to get your grounding before launching off with any sort of practice with any expectations. But, you know, hey! YMMV.
That's true. Hedonism is a treadmill (no pun intended) like most other traps. Heroin users are also hedonists...
What living things do you know that go actively out of their way to experience pain and suffering? Such a behavior would be highly disadvantageous to any species and would run counter to the most basic instincts of all things living. We have pain receptors for a reason, that reason ain't that we just gotta learn to "enjoy the pain". As such I would argue that all living things live their lives on a rather hedonistic basis.
Equally, it could be argued that if "having a calling" makes you "suffer less", because you've found a purpose for your life while a lack of purpose can lead to suffering, then having a calling might just as well be considered a hedonistic lifestyle choice.
The notion that pain and suffering are something that needs to happen to "pull trough" is trough and trough a human invention among the same lines as proper "working virtues".
What about extreme sports? Extreme meaning ultra-marathons here, not jumping off buildings and rocks.
I'd say if you live a too sheltered existence where you avoid all negative feelings, you will have a very bad time in a crisis. So choosing to experience suffering is an insurance of sorts, learning to manage it so that you can function when it's really needed.
There are plenty of masochists out there in the world. Recently there was a pretty clear example of this described in the popular podcast S-Town.
Afaik there are no wild animals exhibiting behavior that's comparable to human masochism if animals with comparable traits existed they most likely went extinct because going out of your way to actively look for "pain and suffering" is a rather big disadvantage in the grand game of survival.
The context of this whole discussion is hedonism, utilitarianism, ethical theory, and philosophy in general. These ideas don't exist (to our knowledge) amongst animals, so I don't find it convincing to use animals to support your argument.
But aren't we humans just that, animals? While the concept of ethical hedonism is of a rather philosophical nature, I still think the basic definition of hedonism translates very well into actual nature.
At least when hedonism is defined as "strive for pleasure and happiness" while evading "pain and suffering" there should be no issue applying this to other animals because we know for a fact that animals, besides humans, are able of these emotions and feelings.
What we don't know is if other animals actively reflect about these things. But that's a matter of motivation and not actual observed behavior, if we go by observed behavior than pretty much all living things are living a "hedonistic lifestyle".
Do you enjoy taking a lazy morning with 30 minutes of quiet reflection each day? Great, but don't assume that means you would be happy maximizing that and living in a monistic life.
The cost benefit on drugs is really complex for example, but so is having a committed relationship, or any other major life choice. That does not mean you should ignore the actual complexity of life, rather you should actually consider the cost benefits of where you live, what you do etc etc.
The atomic hypothesis of the Epicureans seems like a side quest into physics, but the fruit of the journey is that everything's just combinations of atoms and the mind must be made of atoms too, so let's think of it as a physical system with inputs and outputs, and forget about any grander god-narratives. With this perspective comes some very practical advice; Lucretius for instance has an extended passage on how to deal with a "crush". I'll paraphrase but he points out that your crush exists purely as an image in your head, and you really have no idea what the person behind the image is like, and if you finally get together the sex will probably be very awkward, so it's better to direct your mind and amorous intentions elsewhere. I believe the phrase he used was to find smaller pleasures that carry no penalty -- because seeking the larger rewards almost always leads to misery.
Lucretius is a good read and the Latham translation has some felicitous turns of phrase. It's fun imagining arguing with the ancient philosophers about their physical theories, which they support (as best they can) with the available evidence about what wind, liquids, lightning, thunder, earthquakes, smells, tastes, sights, etc. are made of. It's a shame philosophy got distracted with "higher things" for so long (i.e. 2,000 years) because here we are realizing again that everything is made of atoms, and it sure would be nice to have more advice on living life in the face of this fact.
He was a vegetarian, never married and never had any children. I don't see any evidence of him being a sex maniac or advocating free sex or anything like that.
He simply believed that the good life is the absence of suffering and that ethics means minimizing suffering for both oneself and society at large. There is nothing hedonistic about that.
I think there might be a little bit of clickbate going on in the title. The article itself doesn't really elaborate on why Epicurus was criticized by medieval christian philosophers or where their differences were. In fact I think it does more to misrepresent Epicurus than it does to actually edify about him. I think this is just a really bad article.
What definition of hedonism are you using that necessarily involves marriage, eating meat or being a sex maniac? The very basic definition of hedonism is this:
>He simply believed that the good life is the absence of suffering
Nothing more and nothing less because "suffering" and "good" can actually be quite subjective. A masochist might enjoy being degraded and hurt, it's his/her part of the definition of "good", while non-masochists would probably put many SM practices into the category of "I wouldn't want to suffer trough that".
If not eating meat makes you suffer less, on account of empathy for the animals that didn't need to be slaughtered for your nutritious needs, then that fits pretty perfectly into decreasing the suffering around you and for yourself.
the google definition:
the pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence. The sex maniac part was from the article.
Enemies include two millenia of Christianism, so no wonder "hedonist" is not a compliment now.
Makes sense from the religious view: Tell people they need to suffer for growth, people keep on suffering looking for a reason behind the suffering, religion offers a reason while at the same time justifying it's own dogma.
Any animal in the wild, that actively goes out of it's way looking for pain and suffering, is an animal that most likely ain't around anymore, yet somehow exactly that behavior is often expected from humans to show their "virtues".
ˌɛpɪkjʊ(ə)ˈriːən/
noun
1.
a disciple or student of the Greek philosopher Epicurus.
2.
a person devoted to sensual enjoyment, especially that derived from fine food and drink.
And it's just a bunch of text and an image ... When a web page tells me to activate JavaScript I expect some cool webgGL or canvas demo or the like.