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5

I believe that the Stoic point of view makes more sense in this situation because from personal experience i can vouch that overcomingadversity and accomplishing a dificult task does bring happiness. I believe to go through life tryin avoid pain is hardly living at all. Pain is just another aspect of life that everyone has to experience. Avoiding pain is avoiding many situations that help you learn adapt and in the end succeed. I dont know one successful person that has gone without avoiding pain. Avoiding things that are difficult will not help you grow and gain knowlege of things where as one who fights and overcomes adversity will in the long run, be happier.

From what i've learned both philosophys invlove life-avoidance.Epicureans believe their purpose in life should be based souly on peace of mind, happiness, and pleasure. Epicureans favored living in a way as to obtain the greatest amount of pleasure possible during one’s lifetime, yet doing it reasonably in order to avoid suffering.For them it is best to maximize pleasure so one does not feel fear or pain. They believe nothing lasts forever so why not make the most of it. But how can one say their lived life if they never felt pain. fear,pain,suffering; those are the things that causes us to grow and learn from our mistakes. And learning and growing is indeed apart of life. Honestly, how would one truly know happiness if they never experienced pain. I beleive if we do not open ourselves to even the idea of pain the possiblity of reaching our higher self diminishes.I would like the idea of not feeling pain i mean who wouldn't but realistically life is not life without suffering. Stoics on the other hand emphasizes self- control and believe all things happen for a reason. For them it is not what a person said but how they behaved. To Stoics certain emotions were the result of bad judgement and errors. They too are avoiding life. Stoics cherish the happiness afterlife more then anything. by concentrating so much on the after life, they are unable to see the true joy of their present life. Why wait for happiness when you could have it now? I think by following these ways one is cheating themsleves and life and those are two things that shouldn't be cheated.

Blog Post #5

Despite being similar in seeking avoidance of life, Stoics and Epicureans differ in their approaches to reach happiness. Epicureans live a very active lifestyle in always doing things for pleasure and making the most out of pleasurable opportunities because they believe nothing lasts forever. Their goal is to seek maximum pleasure and completely avoid pain in order to reach happiness. Although this seems like an ideal lifestyle, it is not a viable philosophy because it's impossible to avoid pain. Avoiding pain is like avoiding life because pain is a part of life. A Stoic would probably criticize an Epicurean for always living in the moment.. On the other hand, Stoics use happiness as a strategy for survival, which means that they are not likely to live in the moment, but wait until they're life is over to find happiness. They are willing to sit back and accept pain, unlike the Epicureans. Yet Stoics are still avoiding life because they believe whatever they do now doesn't really matter because they'll end up achieving happiness when they get to the afterlife. So essentially, it seems that both philosophies end up backfiring on the individuals themselves because making the most out of life's pleasures and avoiding pain isn't going to help one achieve happiness, nor is passively allowing whatever happen happen because in the end happiness will come in the afterlife. Neither philosophy is realistic. Epicureanism would only be fun for a short time but since you're avoiding pain, nothing will benefit from or learned. Stoicism is wasting your life being stolid and never experiencing the excitements of life. So basically, avoiding life isn't going bring you happiness.

Epicurianis vs. Stoicism

Although both Epicureanism and Stoicism both have important ideas to offer and some good practices which should be brought into our everyday lives, I see Stoicism as a philosophy of life avoidance. I do not believe that there is one person ever that has not felt emotions which the Stoic philosophy seems to condemn. There was never a person who did not at least feel a small twinge of regret at having lost something or remorse for having done something because the people that seems to be true stoics merely exists in Hollywood films and ancient myths. I believe that even if you are looking at something in the best of lights, there is no way to block out the feelings which human nature provides. How can everything always happen for the best when so many things are wrong? How can genocide be for the best? How can a plane crash be for the best? How can a war be for the best? It makes no sense to me, because you can rationalize it any way you want but the fact is that bad things happen and they are not always for a good reason. Passion and emotion are important traits that make humans what we are. If we were to erase emotion then we couldn’t say that we are even alive. you might as well be shut up in a cardboard box alone because there would be no point to life if you felt one monotonous emotion all the time, you would just be a sack of flesh, aimlessly wandering wherever you are told duty calls. Epicureanism on the other hand does not suppress emotions but instead promotes happiness and peace of mind. Epicureans do not face every day with the same somber outlook because they only want to be happy. If all people only wanted to be happy, than there would be less anger, less war and less suffering in the world. I believe that people as epicureans would find happiness in other peoples joy and society would become stronger as a whole.

Blog Post 5

Both epicurean and stoic philosophies aim to live life in the best way possible. In a way, they thus also aim to attain the greatest amount of happiness from life, albeit in different ways. Both philosophies center around how to live one's life in the best, fullest way possible, and as both cater to different people's subjective views on what exactly the best way to live is, neither philosophy should have an issue with the other.

I doubt an epicurean could legitimately criticize a stoic for living their life in the manner of their philosophy; an epicurean's attempts to maximize pleasure in the long term, and if a stoic finds pleasure in overcoming difficulties and challenges, then an epicurean should encourage that stoic to do so. Similarly, an epicurean might find pleasure through hard work and overcoming adversity. If this is so, a stoic would have no problem with that epicurean. However, he or she should still have no problem if the epicurean derived pleasure from simple, natural, and easier life occurrences. The stoic seems to place great value in the end achievement, particularly if that achievement happened after overcoming adversity. This fails to acknowledge that the epicurean's "smaller" pleasures make the large successes worthwhile, and therefore just as valuable.

Personally, neither philosophy seems complete. While it's true that an ideal epicurean would help others (foreseeing that giving help would make him/herself more likely to receive help, etc.), the assistance would be not out of a sense of charity, but out of a cold, calculated decision to further personal gain. Truly caring about others is deemed silly.

An epicurean might counter that as there's only this life, one's own pleasure is the only thing that matters. And if it gives one pleasure to help others, then by all means one should. I get that argument, to a certain extent, but I still feel that through our common humanity there lies at the very least a duty to help and care for others. At best, we help others because we truly care about others, not out of self interest or a resigned sense of duty. Why must there be a reward in an afterlife to make charity necessary or worthwhile?

And that's where the stoics join in the fray. They believe that all events happen for the best, that neither failure nor success should faze one, and that people have a duty to be a force for good. It seems inexplicably passive to unblinkingly accept that all events happen for the good of all (the earthquake in Haiti, for example) and unnecessarily and purposefully cold to force oneself to not be excited or saddened by the events in one's life. What's the point in living if people frown upon and discourage emotions and emotional reactions? Humans (clearly) are not robots; the memorable moments in our lives are the emotional ones. Sadness makes happiness that much sweeter by comparison, and avoiding the worst of the emotions isn't worth discarding the best.

Epicureans and stoics aim to live life to the fullest. They both want to get the most possible out of their lives, but because of their goal both philosophies end up avoiding key parts of life. Epicureans, through their selfishness, miss genuine connections to others. Stoics, through their focus on achievement, miss simple, natural pleasures. In the end, both philosophies are ones of life-avoidance.

Even though Epicureans and Stoics differ in their points of view, I think that they both end up achieving the same thing. Stoics achieve happiness over a long time and work, while Epicureans achieve happiness by living in the moment. a Stoic would criticize an Epicurean for maybe having fun by going out to bars every night with friends and having a job that doesnt really go anywhere. An epicurean would criticize a Stoic for working really hard to get that promotion so they can retire comfortably. Both views however lead to happiness which is the important thing.

Happiness and Life-Avoidance

The stoics and epicureans differ in their philosophies on happiness, but both result in some sort of life-avoidance. Let's start with the epichureans. They think that happiness will come from finding pleasure in the moment you are in, while trying to avoid physical and/or mental pain. Epicureans seek pleasure that releases the body from pain. This however can hinder you from experiencing many things in life. If you are so focused on finding the pleasure in your life, you could easily miss things in life that are important, even if they are not pleasurable. Also, hard work can also come with pain, but the end result is often pleasurable, but an epicurean would never know this because they avoid pain. For example, a gymnast is constantly working out and practicing and often can get seriously injured, but when they win a competition, all the pain and stress ends up being worth the happy ending. However, an epicurean would never know this pleasurable ending because they would never want the original pain of working out and practicing.

Now lets look at the stoics point of view. Stoics believe that they will find the ultimate happiness in their after-life causing them to live a passive lifestyle. If the happiness comes in the afterlife, then why try to find it in your human life? This is another way of life-avoidance because if you're just being passive all through life while you wait for the ultimate happiness in the after life, you'll be missing out on all the amazing things life has to offer. For example, if you sit on your couch watching TV for your entire life just waiting for the happiness in the after life, then you'll never be able to experience the amazing parts of life like ice cream, sledding and friends. This is obviously not a very exciting and rich lifestyle.

It seems that both stoics and epicureans have flaws in their roads to happiness and both plans can be seen as some form of life-avoidance. I see the epicurean view as being extremely unrealistic because pain can be found anywhere and everyone will experience pain at some point in their life, so why try so hard to avoid it? Sometimes pain can even be a good thing. Some of the best breakthroughs come after a breakdown. I also see the stoic view as being unrealistic because living a passive life rarely leads to a happy and exciting life. I understand that the stoics feel the ultimate happiness will come in the after life, but why not have fun during your human life before you enter your after life instead of sitting around and being passive? In the end, I feel that both the stoics and epicureans have lifestyles that are somewhat life-avoiding and I, personally, would not want to be restricted to either philosophy.

5

I think both philosophies are ways of avoiding life. Epicureans believe that the purpose of life is to be as happy has possible and avoid all pain. While pleasure is definitely a good thing and a big part of life so is pain and to avoid pain is to avoid life. Stoics have a much more indifferent attitude towards life. While they aren't constantly trying to reach this unrealistic level of pleasure like epicureans, they are also trying to reach something unrealistic. They believe that after death they will reach some higher purpose or afterlife in which they will ultimately be happy, but because this doesn't exist in the real world to them, they live a very passive existence accepting everything as out of their control and therefore avoiding taking control of their own lives. To me both of these philosophies are a little bit unreasonable. I think the real way to live one's life is to experience it to the fullest and not live by the rules or guidelines of a specific philosophy. It is just as unnatural to avoid all pain as it is to live a passionless passive life in which all pain is accepted and viewed as uncontrollable. In life pain is going to occur and pleasure is going to occur and I think the best way to deal with it depends on each individual situation and not on a general philosophy.

happiness

While the Epicurean view of happiness sounds more appealing to me, and more the way I think most people try to live, there are clearly holes in the philosophy. If everyone lived every day for themselves, just pursuing their wants and desires, many people would be rendered helpless. People without the resources to do whatever they wanted, and still survive, would be miserable and more common. Because of people donating money, others have more access to necessities and things to fulfill their deires. But, if Bill and Melinda chose not to run a charity because they wanted to pursue their own desires instead, maybe less people would have access to health care. Epicureanism seems to be selfish, and only a very small portion of the population would be able to follow its philosophy, with the rest of the population in utter misery. No one would consider the impact of their actions on others before acting. But, I don't think Epicureanism is a form of life-avoidance. Epicureans seek out pleasure, and although they find pleasure in what is going on in the now, that doesn't mean that there are no goals. If pleasure is achieved along every step of the way to a goal, Epicureanism would still be present. Goals sometimes bring as much satisfaction as a cup of hot chocolate after sledding for two hours. Since pain is usually present in every aspect of life, and Epicureans try to find pleasure in every aspect of life, Epicureanism is not avoiding life.
If the entire world followed the philosophy of stoicism, more people would be generally happy. If everyone lived their lives with others in mind happiness would be achieved for everyone because of someone else's thoughtfulness. But, that's an ideal world. If one person failed to keep someone else's happiness in mind carrying out their everyday actions then unhappiness would take over. Stoicism definitely avoids going after personal dreams, which is restricting. Even though stoicism promotes harmonious relationships between people more than epicureanism, stoicism would allow less people to be personally ecstatic. It's hard to be ecstatic with life without stepping on anyone else's feelings. Stoicism is more of a way of life avoidance than Epicureanism since it involves taking less opportunities.

Post #5

To say that to follow either philosophy is to avoid life is misleading. I do think it can't be argued that both philosophies miss the characteristics of life that really make life worthwhile.

Epicureanism guarantees a maximum amount of pleasure for a limitted amount of pain. That sounds rather enjoyable. No one likes to get hurt and everyone likes to feel good. But, at the end of the day, it seems like something's missing. It doesn't sound satisfying to me.

It's Thursday night. It was a snow day and you had a lot of fun sledding. You got inside before you got too cold and had some hot chocolate. Then, you played some video games until you went back outside to build a snow man. The day comes to a close and you decide to end it with a hot bowl of soup watching NBC's smashing line up of shows. That sure sounds like fun.

But, to me, it sounds unsatisfying. One of the leading problems is lack of social interaction. Can we have a unified society when everybody pursues their own interests? If my life was in danger, who would be willing to help me? The worst symptom of this kind of philosophy is the lack of a legacy. Because you live your life for yourself, your death is meaningless. Even if there are records of your existence, they don't matter because all your accomplishments were accomplishments in making yourself feel pleasure. Epicureanism only allows one to live life during life. The accomplishments of a person's life lived for others allows that person to live forever through their deeds for as long as those deeds are remembered, in my opinion.

Stoics focus on altering their attitudes when things happen because they accept that things always happen. Accepting that everything that happens is for the best reinforces a positive outlook on life and allows us to adjust ourselves to that which happens around us.

However, I do have a problem with the focus. The focus is still rather self-centered. The goal is self-preservation, which means that all actions towards other people are done for the benefit of the individual. Compassion in this society is not real compassion. It is for material benefit.

Now, does Stoicism avoid life? Less so than does Epicureanism. Stoicisms acceptance of pain in the achievement of long term goals is a value that should be well regarded. In Stoicism, people try to accomplish things out of themselves, which stimulates science and art for the benefit of mankind.

Roman views on the happy life

i think that the epicureans have the better idea and that the stoics just don't understand it that well since their beliefs are so different from epicureans and therefore reject it all together as a foolish concept. Since stoics value virtue over almost everything else in life, pleasure is not something that is high on their radar. They see little value and importance in it. They do things for the overall effect that they might make and have in the world not really looking out for themselves but for others. They often are taking one for the team and never really thinking about things that would please themselves the most but how their actions will help them in the end. They also have a very passive attitude viewing many actions as things that are not in their control. If they ever feel that they have done their best but there is nothing more that they can do they will simply give up and let fate and destiny do its thing. But in life there is rarely any situation that a person can help in absolutely no way possible. For example, if you run a business and higher all the right people and you think you made all the right decisions for your company and yet your business is still doing poorly a stoic might just give up and let the chips fall where they may but, a person should always try and do more and never give up and through up their hands.
In life an epicurean tend to seek out the most pleasure possible viewing every day as a chance to have fun and find new pleasures. Since they only have one life to live why not?! However this does not mean that a stoic would avoid one task or opportunity just because their might be pain involved. They do not avoid pain and suffering in life they just seek out the pleasure in things. They view opportunities with their eyes wide open to possibilities of pleasure and do not let them be passed by like a stoic would. Overall epicureans definitely do not avoid life they just look for the pleasurable parts in it.

Question Five

I feel like the Stoics’ argument misses the point of Epicureanism. Epicureanism doesn’t shy away from what is difficult—one of its main goals is to form an understanding of the world based on science and fact. Since I don’t know anyone who can definitively say what our purpose in life is, this seems to be as difficult and worthy a goal as any, and one the Epicureans would take pleasure from achieving.

Epicureanism takes life for what it’s worth, and doesn’t blindly assume we have some higher purpose or life after death. In the absence of this knowledge, why shouldn’t we seek as much happiness as possible in the one life we know for sure we have? Intuitively, this makes sense to me.

In terms of “life avoidance,” it seems to me that the Stoics are guiltier here. The line between stoicism and passivity is just too hard to define. Stoics are supposed to accept everything that is not in their control, but there is no clear definition as to what is in or out of one’s control. Unless someone can be a perfect judge of what is truly “in their control” one hundred percent of the time (and this seems impossible to accept), at points they are going to stop being a stoic and start being passive. And passivity has to be the surest route to “life avoidance.” Also, would a good stoic really take pleasure from overcoming adversity or achieving a difficult goal? Shouldn’t they just accept it as a “good choice” and move on?

Blog Post #5: Roman Views of the Happy Life

An epicurean might see a stoic as foolish since they condemn their natural urges and do not hold in high esteem personal happiness. A stoic might criticize the epicurean aim of a life with minimal pain since it seems to dismiss the pleasure that can be found in achieving a difficult goal and overcoming adversity. In short, each see the other’s philosophy as one of life-avoidance.

Weigh in on this debate, articulating your point of view. Please back up your opinions with an explanation and specific examples. Feel free to bring in other dimensions of these philosophies discussed in class (the role of experience and our thoughts in our happiness, the role of duty--those things we may not want to do but need to do--in our happiness, etc.)

POST DUE: Tuesday, February 9 by start of class.
2 RESPONSES TO POSTS DUE: Thursday, February 11 by the start of class.

Note: Remember to create your own post for your main response (your teacher modeled this in class). That way, people will be able to click on the word “comment” below your post to respond to what you said.