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.