Argical Analysis Of Epicurus's Letter To Menoeceus

In the “Letter to Menoeceus”, Epicurus argues that pleasure is the only essential good that people seek. He argues that pleasure is the only thing that people should pursue for its own sake. In this paper, I will make that the argument that pleasure or pain’s absence are not the only things worth pursuing for their own sake. Epicurus—a psychological hedonist—argues that “the end of all our actions is to be free of pain and fear” (Epicurus, par. 6). To summarize his argument, he states that pleasure is the ultimate result of all of our actions. For example, one might ask the question, “What is the point of exercise?”, then the answer would be “to be healthy”. If we kept up this line of questioning, asking “what is the point of the prior …show more content…
Epicurus might say that all of the addressed points are, in their base form, pleasurable. Love creates a warm environment for one to feel accepted, thus more pleasurable. I do agree with this point on that love does make one happy; however, love is something deeper than pleasure. There is an element that is unconditional when it comes to love. One day, say my sister is being abnormally mean to me. I am not going to cease to love her because she is being cold-hearted and crass for a day. Since she is a part of my family, I still love her, despite her previous actions. We share a deeper connection than one that is always mutually pleasurable. With regards to knowledge, Epicurus compares knowledge to happiness and says that everyone ought to be in search of wisdom. Epicurus believes knowledge is one of, if not the biggest source of happiness. However, I think that knowledge is not always a source of happiness. There is the old adage, “ignorance is bliss”. There are some truths that can ultimately be hurtful. For example, if I found out that my parents never told me that I was adopted, that would not give me happiness. I would be quite upset. Thus, gaining knowledge in this instance would not make me happier. Regarding making an impact on the world, Epicurus may also make the claim that the pursuit of bettering the world is also something that people derive pleasure from. It is difficult to argue against that world changing actions are not to some degree pleasurable. It is also difficult to concretely prove that there is an emotion higher than pleasure that one gets when improving the world. Take civil rights activists during the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960’s. At times, they had to experience some torturous actions like being sprayed by high pressure water hoses and having dogs set loose on them. In the end, there must have been some sense of pleasure in knowing that their actions were making a