Category: Philosophy (Page 3 of 12)

In the previous two posts of the Epicureanism 101 series, I laid out the key views of Epicurus on happiness, pleasure, and desires. In short, Epicureans think we attain happiness by seeking pleasure. And the path to pleasure runs through fulfilling desires that are both natural and necessary. In this one, we’ll talk about the fear of death.

Unlike other forms of hedonism, Epicurean hedonism takes pleasure as something like a static state of tranquillity. To live a pleasurable life, we need to overcome our anxieties, fears, and mental and physical troubles.

According to Epicurus, the fear of death stands out as one of the key things that bothers people. And so, in this post, I’ll say a word about that fear and how to overcome it.

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In the first post of the Epicureanism 101 series, we talked about Epicurus’s division between types of desires. He divides between necessary, unnecessary, and unnatural desires to provide us a guide to focus our behavior.

But focus it toward what? That’s the question we answer in today’s post.

For the Epicurean, we aim for pleasure! That is to say that pleasure, for the Epicurean, is our final end or goal. It’s how we achieve eudaimonia.

So, in this post, I’ll say a bit about pleasure.

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It’s been more than 10 years since I finished my dissertation and published my first book. Both centered on the notion of practices. Hitting that round number pushed me to think back to that work and its significance to me – both to my intellectual development and my personal life.

Like much of the work I’ve done as an activist or in my career, it was all pretty heterodox for its time and place. I got my education at a very traditional analytic philosophy department, while my work cut across the lesser appreciated analytic and even continental (!) traditions.

But I bear no grudges there. I’ve never minded heterodoxy. And I’ve greatly appreciated my education both then and now.

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Four years ago, I wrote a blog post about the book Austin’s Way with Skepticism, by Indiana University philosopher Mark Kaplan. You can read it here. However, more broadly, the post was about a certain time in my life. It was about the time I spent at IU in Bloomington, Indiana.

As I worked my way through an undergrad philosophy degree, I liked an approach known as ‘ordinary language philosophy.’ Among other points, I particularly liked the idea that our ordinary position gives us a point of departure for philosophizing. That is to say, given our ordinary position as a starting point, we should be able to reach a philosophical term or viewpoint. Otherwise, we set it aside.

In short, Kaplan interprets the ordinary language philosopher J.L. Austin skillfully. But I thought he missed a broader point in Austin’s work, specifically, and certain kinds of ordinary language philosophy, generally. The point is that we have to understand the communicative functions of our words, even philosophical words like ‘know.’

With that in mind, I turn to the book How to Take Skepticism Seriously. It’s written by Adam Leite, another IU philosopher and my undergrad thesis adviser from 20 years ago. In it, he summarizes much of the epistemological work of his own philosophical career.

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