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Purpose / 43m
Epicurus on Happiness in 45 Minutes
Ancient Lessons on Pleasure, Desire, Friendship, Simplicity, and the Art of Enough
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Purpose / 43m
Ancient Lessons on Pleasure, Desire, Friendship, Simplicity, and the Art of Enough
You have more comfort, choice, entertainment, and convenience than almost any generation before you. So why is it still so difficult to feel content?
Epicurus on Happiness in 45 Minutes explores one of philosophy’s most misunderstood ideas: pleasure is the goal of life, but the highest pleasure is not excess, excitement, or constant stimulation. It is a body at ease and a mind no longer tormented by fear and endless desire.
You’ll discover:
Epicurus does not ask you to give up pleasure.
He asks you to stop sacrificing contentment for pleasures that disappear almost as soon as they arrive.
The audiobook also includes a practical companion guide to help you examine which pleasures genuinely make life better and which desires keep moving the finish line.
We'll email you the first chapter of Epicurus on Happiness in 45 Minutes after you confirm your address.
Athens, around the year three hundred before Christ. Just outside the city walls, along the road to the old Academy, there is a garden. Not a grand one. A walled plot with a house, some fig trees, vegetables, and a few benches in the shade. Over the gate, according to a later Roman writer, there is an inscription. Stranger, here you will do well to stay. Here our highest good is pleasure. If you walk in expecting an orgy, you will be disappointed. The man who keeps the gate will offer you a cup of water and a plain barley cake. He will ask whether you have been well looked after. And he will tell you that this is what the place is for. Not to inflame your hunger, but to satisfy it. Not to make you thirsty for more, but to cure the thirst. The garden belongs to a philosopher named Epicurus. Inside, unusually for the ancient world, there are men and women, free citizens and slaves, all living and studying together. They eat simply. They talk a great deal. They laugh. And they are, by the accounts that survive, unusually content. Two thousand three hundred years later, his name has become a word for a man who loves expensive food. An epicure. Few philosophers have been so thoroughly misunderstood. Because Epicurus did teach that pleasure is the goal of life. But what he meant by pleasure is almost the opposite of what we mean.
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