Hedonism

We tell you what hedonism is and its characteristics. Also, his relationship with the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans.

What is hedonism?

Hedonism is a philosophical current that identifies good with pleasure. and maintains that this is the end of a happy life, that is, for hedonists, happiness is in pleasure.

The hedonistic current has its origin in the theories developed by the Greek philosophers Aristippus of Cyrene (435-350 BC) and Epicurus of Samos (341-270 BC).

As a philosophy of pleasure, hedonism is not an escape from reality, but rather a thought of moderation and tranquility of the soul. The search for happiness through the pursuit of pleasure and the absence of pain are its two key points.

A philosophical thought that is identified with the search for an ultimate goal is a teleological conception. Hedonism is a teleological conception of happiness. This allowed hedonistic thinking to be resumed at different times in history, which is why it is usually divided into:

• Ancient hedonism (4th and 3rd centuries BC). It corresponds to the thought of Aristippus and Epicurus.
• Modern hedonism (18th century). It corresponds to the thought of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).

Characteristics of hedonism

In general, all variants of hedonism share some common traits:

• The only thing good in itself (that has intrinsic value) is what pleases the spirit.
• Hedonism does not encourage sensory or bodily pleasure in itself, but rather the pleasure of the good.
• Pleasure and delight are identified with good.
• Pleasure is the absence of pain and is good in itself.
• An act is good according to the pleasure it brings.

History of hedonism

Hedonism as a search for pleasure and happiness has its origins in the ancient Greek world. For the Greeks there were three conceptions of pleasure:

• Pleasure as the end of life.
• Pleasure as a neutral state of stoicism.
• Pleasure as the genesis of man.

The three notions of pleasure intersect in the different hedonistic schools. The two most important were the Cyrenaic school, founded by Aristippus of Cyrene, and the Epicurean school, founded by Epicurus of Samos.

The Cyrenaics and Epicureans developed their ideas from the 4th century BC. C. and until the arrival of Christianity to the Western world during the Middle Ages. Although during the 3rd century there were some Christian communities that were established far from the cities and adopted lifestyles similar to the Epicureans, already with the arrival of philosophers such as Saint Augustine (354-430) and Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 ) the notion of pleasure changed.

The ideas of enjoyment and excess changed, and hedonistic customs eradicated. The search for God and the search for pleasure were differentiated to the point of being contradictory, privileging the care of the soul over the care of the body.

Only in the 18th century, thanks to Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, fathers of utilitarianism, did hedonism regain some prominence. These philosophers proposed pleasure as a good in itself.

Greek hedonism

Hedonism according to Aristippus

Aristippus of Cyrene was a Greek philosopher, disciple of Socrates, who founded the Cyrenaic school. It is considered one of the antecedents of the hedonistic doctrine.

For Aristippus, there were two passions: pain and delight. Pain was a movement caused by a deprivation of some kind and delight was the consummation of a need or the joy of a wish fulfilled.

Aristippus and the Cyrenaics believed that passions came from an animated organism. This implied that the senses were the measure of pain and pleasure. The ultimate goal of the human being was bodily delight, since the body was more receptive to pleasure than the spirit was to pain. Added to this was the idea of ​​a happy life as the sum of past and future particular delights.

However, for Aristippus the happy life lay in prudence. Pleasure was in satisfying bodily needs but not as a total inclination to delight, but as the choice of one delight over another. This choice, moreover, had to be governed by the virtue of moderation, as necessary for a happy life as prudence.

Hedonism according to the Cyrenaic doctrine was related to delight, passions and spirit, crossed by prudence and moderation.

Hedonism according to Epicurus

Epicurus of Samos was a Greek philosopher who founded the Epicurean school.

For Epicurus, happiness depended on the lack of pain and disturbance. Achieving this involved reaching the state of ataraxia, which Epicurus defined as “imperturbability.” Pleasure, for its part, was a way to achieve health of the body and ataraxia of the soul. Epicurus defined it as the beginning and the end of a happy life.

However, happiness was not achieved only by satisfying the needs of the soul and body, but one had to learn to deal with reason, which was the faculty that helps reject that which deprives human beings of tranquility. For this, the human being was self-sufficient: he did not need cities or their institutions, wealth or honors.

Thus, Epicurean principles could be summarized in the idea that human beings only needed the absence of pain in the body and the presence of pleasure in the soul. Achieving these two aspects implied a happy life as wise men and women.

Hedonism according to Epicurean doctrine was related to happiness and pleasure.

Other forms of hedonism

In addition to the hedonism of Aristippus and Epicurus, there were other forms:

• eudaemonism. Aristotle also believed that pleasure, understood as “good,” was the means to happiness. The eudaemonists affirmed that to be happy you had to act by mediating between the animal part and the mental part.
• Libertinism. The poet John Wilmot (1647-1680) and the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) believed that any type of moral restriction of the individual was unnecessary and went against human nature.
• utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill changed the idea of ​​pleasure and brought it to the social well-being of the majority of people based on the idea of ​​pleasure as something useful.
• Contemporary hedonism. The French philosopher Michel Onfray (1959-) is the current hedonist, who believes that the passions of the body have to be thought of as tools allied to the development of people.

References

• Laertius, Diogenes. Lives of the most illustrious philosophers. Life of the sophists. Mexico, DF: Editorial Porrúa., 2013.
• Larráyoz, Alejandro Apesteguía. “The logic of existence in classical thinkers: Permanence and relevance of Epicurus and Lucretius.” Carolina: Humanism and Technology (2007): 74-80.
• Room, Jorge Francisco Aguilera. “Pleasure in classical philosophy.” UNAM Philosophy Magazine (1992): 54-66.
• Epicurus. Complete works. Edition and translation by José Vara. Universal Letters Chair (2014).
• Onfray, Michel. The wisdoms of antiquity, Counterhistory of philosophy I. Editorial Anagrama (2013).