BM

Stoicism and Epicureanism

Epicureanism

  • The good is pleasure, the absence of pain

  • Finding pleasure in simple things is great because those things promote self-sufficiency.

  • Epicurus discusses three types of desire:

Type of Desire

Example

Proper Outcome

Natural and Necessary

Desire to eat enough food to survive

Should desire

Natural and Unnecessary

Desire to eat fancy, extravagant foods

Allowed to desire, but must be careful

Empty

Desiring to be immensely wealthy

Should not desire

Stoicism

  • The good is tranquility, a state of the soul achieved by a lack of dissatisfaction

  • We should alter our desires to bring them in line with the external world, since we don’t have control over the external world. We can control what is up to us (internal factors) and can’t control what is not (external factors)

  • Things are not objectively good or bad. They are only good or bad because of our judgments about them

  • The stoics believe that everything is determined and linked together and that each person should want things to happen as they do happen