Epicureanism is Epicurus's teaching that the good life is a quiet one — freedom from bodily pain and mental disturbance, reached by wanting less. In ordinary English the word also means devotion to refined pleasure, especially good food and drink — close to the opposite of what he taught.
Epicurus of Samos — the school is named for him, though the doctrines draw on earlier atomism.
// Where it sits
The English word derived from this philosophy now means roughly the opposite of it.
What it really means
An epicure is a person with refined taste in food and wine. That is what the English word means, and it is very nearly the opposite of what Epicurus taught.
In the Letter to Menoeceus, in Robert Drew Hicks's translation, he writes: “Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet … while bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips.” He also disowned the caricature in advance, in a sentence that reads like he'd already met his own reputation: “It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of merrymaking, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life.”
The reason is structural rather than puritanical. Epicurus defined the goal as the absence of bodily pain and mental disturbance — which means there is a ceiling. Once the pain of hunger is gone, there's nowhere further up to go, and a more elaborate meal adds nothing except new dependencies to be anxious about. Luxury, on his account, increases agitation. His strategy is preserved in one line: if you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don't give him more money — reduce his desires.
The caricature does describe someone. It describes the Cyrenaics, a rival school of hedonists who really did prioritise immediate bodily pleasure, and whom Epicurus argued against. Two and a half thousand years later, their position is walking around wearing his name.
Where it comes from
An accident of history: the man's name literally means helper, and the English word derived from it now means gourmet.
Myths & misconceptions
An epicure is a connoisseur of fine food and wine — that's what Epicureanism was about.
This is close to a straight reversal. In the Letter to Menoeceus Epicurus writes that 'plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet' and that 'bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips'. He explicitly disowns the caricature: pleasure is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and merrymaking, nor the delicacies of a luxurious table.
Epicureanism means maximising pleasure.
It means removing disturbance, and treats luxury as counterproductive — seeking it intensifies rather than reduces the mental agitation philosophy exists to remove. He sorts desires into natural-and-necessary, natural-but-unnecessary, and empty. The strategy survives in one line: if you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don't give him more money — reduce his desires.
Compare & contrast
Epicureanism vs Stoicism
Both target tranquillity, from opposite metaphysics. Epicureans get there by removing fear of gods and death through atomism, and by withdrawing from public life. Stoics get there by aligning with a rational cosmos and staying in it. Same destination, opposite instructions about whether to show up to work.
| // | Epicureanism | Stoicism |
|---|---|---|
| Route | Remove fear | Align with reason |
| Public life | Withdraw | Participate |
| Cosmos | Atoms and void | Rational order |
| Goal | Ataraxia | Ataraxia |
How it connects
Tell it apart
Questions people ask
- Did Epicurus believe in luxury?
- No — he argued the opposite. In the Letter to Menoeceus, in Robert Drew Hicks's translation: 'Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when once the pain of want has been removed, while bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips.' He held that pursuing luxury intensifies rather than reduces mental agitation, because it manufactures new dependencies.
- Why is 'epicurean' used for food?
- The word drifted almost into its opposite. Epicurus wrote, of the pleasant life, that 'it is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of merrymaking, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life' (trans. Robert Drew Hicks). The stereotype actually fits the rival Cyrenaics, a group of ancient hedonists who genuinely did recommend eat, drink and be merry.
- What did Epicurus say about death?
- That it isn't an event you will ever undergo. From the Letter to Menoeceus: 'Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.' The argument is that you cannot be harmed by a state in which there is no you to be harmed.