Letter to Menoeceus

Epicurus has been misread for two thousand years. The word epicurean has come to mean a lover of fine food, excessive pleasure, sensory indulgence. This is almost exactly wrong. The Letter to Menoeceus — his most complete surviving text — describes a philosophy of radical simplicity, arguing that the highest pleasure is the absence of pain and the presence of peace.

He wrote from his garden in Athens — a modest place where he lived with friends and students, growing vegetables, drinking water, occasionally wine. He argued that one needed very little to be happy, that the fear of not having enough caused more suffering than not having enough ever would, and that the greatest good was ataraxia: the untroubled mind.

It is not the young man who is to be called happy,
but the old man who has lived well.

The argument, briefly

Epicurus distinguishes between two kinds of pleasure: kinetic pleasures — the active joys of eating, drinking, company — and katastematic pleasures, the stable state of having no pain, no anxiety, no unfulfilled need. The first kind fluctuates and cannot be sustained. The second kind, once reached, is complete in itself. Philosophy, for Epicurus, is the practice of reaching and maintaining that second state.

The letter also contains his famous argument about death: it should not be feared, because when death is, we are not, and when we are, death is not. The fear of death is therefore always fear of something we will never experience. It is wasted fear.

What remains useful

On desireBefore pursuing something, ask whether it is natural and necessary, natural but unnecessary, or vain. Only the first deserves effort.
On friendshipEpicurus considered friendship the greatest of all external goods — not because of what friends provide, but because of the quality of presence they make possible.
On fearMost fear is anticipatory. The imagined future pain is worse than any real one. Philosophy is the practice of noticing this.
On sufficiencyAdd up what you actually need. The number is smaller than you think. The rest is appetite mistaken for necessity.

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship. — Epicurus

The Letter to Menoeceus is short — four pages. It can be read in twenty minutes. It has been a corrective against excess for over two thousand years. Not because Epicurus was an ascetic — he wasn't — but because he understood that the pleasure in having is always outweighed by the pleasure of not needing.

The garden is always enough.