Following my previous two posts on the Epicurean theories of pleasure and desire, we turn now to Epicurean social philosophy. The strength of Epicurean social philosophy is that I don’t have to convince you of obscure moral principles or draw up fancy syllogisms. I just have to appeal to your pleasure and human psychology.
The Epicurean has five reasons for any individual to not behave poorly (unjustly, unfairly, or harmfully).1
Poor behavior is usually illegal. If you get caught, the state will restrict your freedom or take your money. Both of these are painful.
If you behave poorly yet legally, people will be hesitant to associate with you, if they choose to at all. They may scold you, shame you, or otherwise make you feel bad. These are also painful.
If you behave poorly and aren’t caught by the state or your peers, you have to live with the anxiety that you might be caught, and thus bringing on the painful punishments of your government or peers. For the Epicurean, anxiety is an avoidable pain, and so you shouldn’t behave poorly, even if you won’t be caught, to avoid that anxiety.
As Dr. Emily Austin points out, poor behavior usually comes in service of corrosive desires.2 So even if you do something that is legal and not stigmatized by your friends, you still may experience pain because this one behavior is correlated with another behavior that causes you pain. I call this having Epicurean Sickness: Behaving poorly, though technically not illegal or unethically, because of your inability to be satisfied.3
You grew up in a culture that values legality, justice, cooperation and mutual aid.4 What’s more, it’s the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans have natural moral instincts.5 We have hard-wired preferences for some behaviors, and strong objections to others. When we reflect on our own actions and realize they were wrong, we feel awful. We call these feelings anxiety and guilt. They are painful, and avoiding them is sufficient reasons for an Epicurean to not do them.
Okay, so the Epicurean has great reason to not do bad things, but what about doing good things? Should the Epicurean give to charity, volunteer, or otherwise sacrifice for others? Should they practice virtue?
The short answer is yes!
For the Epicurean, virtues are simply habits, a suite of behaviors that create desired outcomes for the ones who practice them. They have instrumental value in creating pleasure. In this light, it’s really hard for the Epicurean to deny the value of virtues because they are so good at achieving pleasurable ends.
I’ll just quote the Everyday Epicurean, who says it best:
Consider justice, that cornerstone of virtue the Stoics hold so dear…Epicureans recognize…that justice exists for mutual advantage and the prevention of harm. When we act justly, we create pleasure—not necessarily the immediate kind that comes from a good meal, but the deeper satisfaction of living in a stable society where we don't have to fear constant betrayal or violence. The same goes for wisdom…what good is wisdom if it doesn't help us understand which pleasures to pursue and which to avoid? It's like having a map but refusing to use it to reach your destination. The destination…is always a form of pleasure.6
What’s more, practicing virtue often just feels good, even if it’s inconsequential. I’ll demonstrate this with an anecdote.
As I was researching this blog series, I took a train ride. The train was full, and as I boarded there were two empty seats next to each other, and a couple in a relationship behind me. If you’ve ever been on an Amtrak, you know I was fully within my right to claim one of these empty row seats and likely have no companion on my trip.
I could have claimed this seat, stretched my legs out, and enjoyed my trip with no stranger next to me, but the couple would have likely been separated, with neither having that luxury. It wouldn’t been the worst injustice in the world, but doing this felt icky to me (reason #5 above!). So, I offered these two strangers the seats, and moved on to sit by someone else in the train.
In denying myself that empty row, giving it to two strangers and opting to sit by a total stranger, I denied myself some pleasure, but felt even more by practicing the virtue of benevolence. I felt good, because doing virtuous things feels good, no matter how small, especially when you are accultured to seeing them as good.
I’ll admit, not everyone is built this way. The Epicurean would say that there is no inherent obligation to deny yourself an empty train row, but there is strong reason to think we should at least try: Doing good, feels good, and so we should continue trying to be good!
However you may define those things
To see why corrosive desires are bad, see my previous post.
At some point, I’ll write a post on this.
Some people think these values are “objective good,” as a quality of the universe, while others don’t, including the Epicureans. What’s important here is that our motivations aren’t necessarily inspired by objective goods/bad. You can agree with the Epicurean regardless of your position on moral realism.
I’ll write a post about this some day as well
New Rule: Block quotes don’t count for word count.