Epicure’s error

Epicure (341 – 271 BC) got it badly wrong when he claimed that the purpose of life is generating pleasure. He believed, falsely, that pleasure ensued if and when pain and fear (to wit, physical and mental stress) were eliminated. In that he differed little from the Shakyamuni Buddha. Because of that fundamental error both Epicurism and Buddhism decayed to insignificance.

Actually, the purpose of life all dynamic biological units is survival, to wit, to live on (in this life and in via one’s genes). Pleasure and happiness merely operate as biological system’s relative survival status signals.

Epicure claimed that “Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance”. That was foolish on two counts. Firstly, I cannot have but only be a discrete (i.e. atomic) moment, as was suggested by Democritus and Pyrrho, recently returned from India with a few early Buddhist insights. And, secondly, enjoyment (to wit, pleasure or happiness) derives not from a ‘what’ (or a lack of a ‘what’) as such but from the achievement of a (indeed any) ‘what’ that increases my relative survival capacity in my current world, in short, from increasing my survival capacity.

Epicure’s aphorism should have read: “Achieving (abundance, i.e. an abundance of survival assets) gives pleasure!” *

* ‘We enjoy (i.e. derive pleasure or happiness from) whatever gives us a survival edge in the current world!’