Epicurus Letter To Herodotus

Every person in the world wants to be happy and what makes us happy? Well that would be pleasure. Pleasure is a feeling of happiness and satisfaction physically through our body and mentality in our mind. Everyone in the world will do anything for pleasure no matter what it is. But should every pleasure we seek be desired because not everything is free, but comes with a price? Is pleasure going to be our most important goal in life? Well to answer those questions, you should read Letter to Herodotus by Epicurus, who is a philosopher, and maybe he could answer that question. Epicurus will tell us how to live a full and successful life. Epicurus made Epicureanism where we will learn the important of pleasure and the decision that we made that will lead to happiness or the destruction of

your life. What is Epicureanism? Epicureanism is to life a blessedly life with pleasure as our main goal for happiness and to not fear god or death because it will give us a painful and unhappy life.
One of Epicureanism ideas is the fear we have with god and his divine punishments are pointed because all the fear will lead our lives with despair. Epicurus says, “First, believe that god is an indestructible and blessed animal, in accordance with the general conception of god commonly held, and do not ascribe to god anything foreign to his indestructibility or repugnant to his blessedness.” (123). Epicurus believes that there is a god or a higher being that is perfect and eternal. God is a perfect being and in the state of perfect happiness and god will not involve himself with human affairs because if he does get involve then he is not god but an imperfect being like a human being. So there is no reason to fear the divine punishment from god because living in fear will only make life unhappy.
Another idea of Epicureanism is to not fear about death for it will make our lives full of unhappiness. Epicurus says that we should not live in fear of death because there is nothing to be afraid because it is just one of our senses. But he wants us to live with pleasure because it is innate good and it is the best sense that we can have while live. Living in worry of death is bad for one’s health and that is why should live with pleasure because it is good for one’s health. For example, Epicurus says, “Get used to believing that death is nothing to us. For all good and bad consists in sense-experience, and death is the privation of sense-experience” (124). What he is trying to say is why should we worry about the coming our death, when death is not coming any second right now. We should not be wasting our moment worrying about death but to get every second of pleasure before death comes. We should be living life to the fullest and not waste this chance of life.
Finally, Epicureanism idea is that pleasure is to be the highest good in life and also was created. Epicurus says, “And this is why we say that pleasure is the starting-point and goal of living blessedly” (129) meaning that pleasure something that we will pursue and it is our goal in the end for us to live a blessedly life. Epicurus wants us to put pleasure as our main goal in life to achieve because living with happiness our whole life will give us a fully experience life to have when we die.
Should every pleasure be desired and fulfilled? The answer to that question is no, not every pleasure should be fulfilled. According to Epicurus says, “So every pleasure is a good thing, since it has a nature congenial [to us], but not every one is to be chosen” (129). Epicurus believes that not every pleasure should be desired because every pleasure might have to endure pain trying to gain the pleasure. But not all pains should be avoided because enduring the pain could result in a larger and better pleasure in the end. Epicurus says, “we believe many pains to be better than pleasures when a greater pleasure follows for a long while if we endure the pains” (129). Because of this, that Epicurus wants us to, “comparative measurement and an examination of the advantages and disadvantages” (130), meaning we have to analyzes the advantages and disadvantages and to see if it is worth to desire and fulfill that pleasure. In the end it is our decision weather we endure the pain to achieve great pleasure or to avoid it because it has to many disadvantages and it is not worth the pain to pursuit.
An example of decision making when it comes to advantages and disadvantages of pleasure.

One day, a male student decides to hang out with his friends and in the middle of the night they decided to snort some cocaine and ask if he wanted to do some lines with them. So he thought of a quote from one of his favorite philosopher Epicurus saying, “comparative measurement and an examination of the advantages and disadvantages” (130). Then he started to think out his advantages and disadvantages. If the student chooses to snort the cocaine he would receive great pleasure when the drugs start to affect him. But afterward the side effect of the drug will give him an addiction to it and if he does to much of it can possibly kill him. The addiction would probably make him waste money or beg people that he would do anything with his body for some of the drug. To him snorting the cocaine has more disadvantages than there are advantages. So in the end the male student decided not to snort the drugs with his friends and not associate with them anymore. This example is also a pleasure that should not be fulfilled because it has too many disadvantages and is not worth to pain to achieve

pleasure.
A critic will say that a man cannot live all his life with pleasure because drugs is something that gives us pleasure. Well Epicurus would have to disagree with the critic because he did say that pleasure is the highest good, but not every pleasure should be desire or fulfilled. Epicurus says, “So every pleasure is a good thing, since it has a nature congenial [to us], but not every one is to be chosen” (129). He also says, “comparative measurement and an examination of the advantages and disadvantages” meaning that we have to examine and measure all the advantages and disadvantages before we can make our decisions. Drugs gives a person great pleasure, but it also comes with great pain like addiction. Pleasure of drugs will stay constant every time it is taken, but the pains of the addiction will only increase every single time. A critic will agree that there are too many disadvantages than advantages. Also drugs will lead our life into an unhappy one, which against Epicurus idea of a blessedly and happy life. So in Epicurus mind this would be pleasure that we should not fulfilled.
Epicureanism is a great ideal that we should follow when living out our life. Living a life full of happiness and never having to live of our life full anxiety and worry sound pretty good. Not everything that feels good means it is good for us and not everything that is painfully is bad for us. Like Epicurus says, “we believe many pains to be better than pleasures when a greater pleasure follows for a long while if we endure the pains” (129). In the end it is based on our choices that we think will give us the most pleasure and happiness in life. It is also better for the body and mind to not worry about anything because it is bad for our health. Life should be live in happiness and not in fear. Remember think before choosing and always pursue the bigger and better pleasures in life.