The Garden of Simple Pleasures: Rediscovering Epicurus

Few philosophers have been as misunderstood as Epicurus. His name now means a lover of luxury, a connoisseur of fine food and wine. The real Epicurus lived on bread and water, kept a simple garden outside Athens, and taught that the greatest pleasures are the cheapest ones. Reading his surviving letters and sayings was a quiet correction to almost everything I assumed about him. His philosophy is not an invitation to indulge. It is a careful argument that a happy life is a calm one, and that calm is far easier to reach than we think.

Here is what Epicurus taught me about pleasure rightly understood, about the fear that poisons our days, and about why friendship may be the surest road to happiness.

Key takeaways

• Pleasure means the absence of pain, in body and especially in mind, not endless indulgence.
• Desires come in kinds: some natural and necessary, some natural but unnecessary, some merely empty.
• “Death is nothing to us,” because where death is, we are not, and where we are, death is not.
• Friendship is among the greatest goods, a deep source of security and joy.
• A simple life is a free life, hard to disturb because it asks for so little.

What pleasure really means

Epicurus did teach that pleasure is the goal of life, but he meant something very specific. The highest pleasure is not a feast; it is ataraxia, a deep tranquillity, the state of someone free from bodily pain and mental disturbance. Once hunger is satisfied, plain bread gives as much real pleasure as a banquet, and it comes without the anxiety, expense, and excess the banquet brings. He even said that on bread and water he could rival the gods in happiness. This reframes the whole question. The aim is not to pile up pleasures but to remove the things that disturb us, after which a quiet contentment is simply there, waiting.

Sorting our desires

The tool I found most useful is Epicurus’ classification of desire. Some desires are natural and necessary, like food, shelter, and safety; these are easy to satisfy and bring real relief. Some are natural but unnecessary, like rich food or luxury; pleasant, but not needed. And some are empty, like the craving for fame, power, and unlimited wealth; these can never be satisfied, because they have no natural limit. Most of my own restlessness, I realised, comes from chasing desires in that last category, wants manufactured by comparison and vanity rather than by any real need. Learning to tell the three apart is itself a path to peace.

The cure for the fear of death

Epicurus believed that the deepest source of human misery is fear, above all the fear of death and the gods. His famous argument is bracingly logical. Death, he says, is nothing to us, for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. We will never actually meet our own death; there is no moment in which we are there to suffer it. Whether or not this fully consoles, I find it does real work. So much dread is the fear of a future state we will not be around to experience. Epicurus asks me to spend my anxiety more wisely, on the life I am actually living.

What I’m taking with me

Epicurus turns out to be a philosopher of subtraction. Happiness, for him, is mostly a matter of removing what disturbs us, false beliefs, empty desires, needless fears, until what remains is a calm and grateful enjoyment of simple things and good friends. The lesson I am keeping is to want less and notice more: to be suspicious of desires with no natural limit, to value a quiet meal with people I love above almost any luxury, and to remember that the richest life may be the one that has learned how little it actually needs.

Frequently asked questions

What did Epicurus actually teach?

That the goal of life is pleasure understood as tranquillity, the absence of physical pain and mental disturbance, reached through simple living, good friendships, and freedom from fear, not through luxury or indulgence.

What is ataraxia?

A state of serene calm and freedom from disturbance. For Epicurus it is the highest form of pleasure and the true aim of a good life.

Why did Epicurus say death is nothing to fear?

Because we never actually experience our own death. While we are alive, death is not present, and once death comes, we no longer exist to suffer it, so it cannot harm us.

References & further reading

1. Inwood, Brad, and L. P. Gerson (eds.). The Epicurus Reader. Hackett, 1994.
2. Long, A. A., and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers. Cambridge University Press, 1987.
3. Diogenes Laertius. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book X.