There is a philosopher who is an outlier among his peers, who are usually hedonistic and self-disciplined. He seems to understand this yearning for pleasure and would like to help. He wrote: "If I reject all the pleasures of the mouth, the pleasures of sex, the pleasures of the ears, the tenderness of seeing the shadows, then I will not be able to conceive of what goodness is." ”
Epicurus was born in 341 BC on the evergreen island of Samos, near the west coast of Asia Minor. Fascinated by philosophy from an early age, he traveled at the age of 14 to listen to lectures by the Platonic Parfile and the atomist philosopher Nausifen [inset]. But he disagreed with much of what they said, and before he was 30 years old, he decided to organize his thoughts into his own philosophy of life.
He is said to have written 300 books on a wide range of subjects: On Love, On Music, On Fair Trade, On Life (4 volumes), and On Nature (37 volumes), but over the centuries it was almost all lost due to a series of catastrophes, and as a result his philosophical ideas could only be re-established on the basis of surviving fragments, together with the testimony of later Epicurean believers.
The most striking distinctive feature of his philosophy is the emphasis on sensual pleasure: "Happiness is the starting point and the goal of a happy life," Epicurus said. He merely affirmed ideas that many people already had and that were rarely accepted by philosophy. The philosopher admits his love of food: "The root of all goodness comes from the pleasure of the mouth, and even wisdom and culture must be associated with it." The philosophy of the line makes dang equivalent to a guide to happiness:
If someone claims to be unprepared for the study of philosophy, or has missed the time, it is tantamount to saying that he is either too young or too old to enjoy pleasure.
Few philosophers have so candidly acknowledged their hedonistic lifestyle. Many were shocked by this, especially when they heard that Epicurus had attracted the support of some wealthy people, first in Lampsacus in the Dardanelles, and later in Athens, and used their money to establish a philosophical school to promote happiness.
Both boys and girls are enrolled in this school, encouraging them to live and learn together for fun. The thought of what outsiders do in school tickles curiosity and morally condemns them. Silu edit
Disgruntled Epicureans often revealed activities between lectures. Epicurus's assistant, Titmocrates' brother Timokrates, spread rumors that Epicurus vomited twice a day because he ate too much. Theodima of the Stoics did a mean thing: he published 50 lewd letters, insisting that they had been written by Epicurus when he was drunk and sexually promiscuous.
Despite these criticisms, Epicurus's teachings remain widely followed. This doctrine spread widely in the Mediterranean; the Joy School was founded in Syria, Judia, Egypt, Italy, and Gaul; its influence lasted for 500 years, only gradually eliminated by the hostility of brutal barbarians and Christians during the decline of the Western Roman Empire.
After this, however, Epicurus's name entered several languages in the form of an adjective, expressing his hobbies (Oxford English Dictionary: "Epicurus's: Devoted to the Pursuit of Pleasure, by extension: Luxury, Carnalism, Gluttony").
Twenty-2340 years after the philosopher's death, I browsed through a London newspaper outlet and found several magazines called Epicurean Life, a quarterly magazine about hotels, yachts and restaurants, printed on paper as bright as polished apples.
There is also a small restaurant in Worcestershire named Epicurus, offering customers a secluded setting, high-back seats, scalloped seashell grilled Risotto with italian gravy and white mushrooms as a further interpretation of Epicurus's hobbies.
From ancient times to the present, from the Stoic Theodima to the editor of the magazine Epicurean Life, the associations evoked by Epicurean philosophy are so consistent that it seems that the meaning of "happiness" seems to be self-evident when it comes to "happiness". "How can I be happy?" If you don't mention money, it's not a problem at all.
But, "How can I be healthy?" "It's harder to answer. For example, we sometimes suffer from nameless headaches, or severe abdominal pain after dinner. We know there is a problem, but it is difficult to find a solution.
In pain, people often think of some strange treatments: ants, bloodletting, nettle soup, drilling and so on. The temples were pounding in pain, as if the entire skull was in a tightening tight hoop, and the head was about to burst at any moment.
At this time, the intuition needs the most is to put some air in the skull. The patient asked his friend to put his head on the table and drill a small hole in one side of the head. A few hours later, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Despite the unpleasant atmosphere in many waiting rooms, it is generally believed that a doctor should be consulted if you are sick, because a person who has a deep study of the workings of the human body is better than an intuitive person who can point out a better way to health.
The premise of the existence of medicine is the gap between the layman's confused concept of physical discomfort and the more accurate knowledge available to reasonable doctors. The doctor's role is to compensate for the patient's ignorance of his own body, which can sometimes be fatal.
At the heart of Epicurus's doctrine is that we answer intuitively how to be happy as we intuitively answer how to be healthy. Immediate answers are often wrong. Our souls do not necessarily state their own illness more clearly than our bodies do, and our intuitive diagnosis is no more accurate than that of our body. Hole drilling symbolizes how difficult it is for us to understand ourselves, and this symbolism applies to both the body and the spirit.
There was a person who felt very uncomfortable in his heart. Lazy to get up in the morning, sullen and unhappy with the family, absent-minded. He intuitively blamed the bad profession he had chosen, so he sought to change careers at a high cost. This is my last reference to the book "Ancient Greek Town Exploration".
He was anxious to decide that it would be faster to engage in fishing, so he bought fishing nets and bought a stall at the market at a high price. But his melancholy did not diminish slightly. In the words of the Epicurean poet Lucretius, we often "as if the sick did not know the cause."
We go to doctors because they have more diseases of the flesh than we know. For the same reason, when our souls are unwell, we should go to philosophers and judge them by the same standards as doctors:
Just as medicine is useless if it does not cure the disease, so is the philosophy of not being liberated from spiritual suffering.
According to Epicurus, the task of philosophers is to help us decipher the pulse of pain and desire that we do not understand, so that we are not free from making false plans for the pursuit of pleasure.
We should stop acting on our first instincts and first examine the rationality of our desires in a way similar to the cross-examination method that Socrates used to evaluate ethical definitions a hundred years ago. Epicurus promises us that philosophy can lead us to excellent healing and true happiness by proposing a diagnosis of etiology that sometimes seems counterintuitive.
Source: The Solace of Philosophy
Author: Alain DeBoton
The title is added by the editor
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