History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition

by Bertrand Russell

The philosophy of Epicurus, like all those of his age (with the partial exception of Scepticism), was primarily designed to secure tranquillity. He considered pleasure to be the good, and adhered, with remarkable consistency, to all the consequences of this view. ‘Pleasure,’ he said, ‘is the beginning and end of the blessed life.’ Diogenes Laertius quotes him as saying, in a book on The End of Life, ‘I know not how I can conceive the good, if I withdraw the pleasures of taste and withdraw the pleasures of love and those of hearing and sight.’ Again: ‘The beginning and the root of all good is the pleasure of the stomach; even wisdom and culture must be referred to this.’ The pleasure of the mind, we are told, is the contemplation of pleasures of the body. Its only advantage over bodily pleasures is that we can learn to contemplate pleasure rather than pain, and thus have more control over mental than over physical pleasures. ‘Virtue’, unless it means ‘prudence in the pursuit of pleasure’, is an empty name. Justice, for example, consists in so acting as not to have occasion to fear other men's resentment—a view which leads to a doctrine of the origin of society not unlike the theory of the Social Contract.

Freud and Epicurus