Name: The philosophy of hedonism | A-Z of ISMs Episode 8 - BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2024-07-22T13:42:26.000Z
Duration: 2 min
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Hedonism is the philosophy of living your life to experience pleasure and avoid pain.

So, if you're watching this while lying on a chaise longue and eating sweets, you're probably a hedonist.

Oh, unless you hate sugar, in which case, you're probably a masochist, and that is another film.

The word hedonism comes from the ancient Greek, hedone, meaning pleasure.

And some of the earliest recorded hedonists were Greek, Democritus, Aristippus, and most famously, the 4th century BCE philosopher, Epicurus.

Although Epicurus was less of a thrill-seeker than his hedonism implies, for Epicurus, the best human condition was a state which he called ataraxia, meaning tranquility.

Epicurus believed that small pleasures were more likely to bring us tranquility than earth-shattering pleasures, and it's easy to see his point.

If you find pleasure in a glass of wine with friends at the end of a day, that will be relatively easy to achieve.

Crucially, for the Epicurean thinker, that means it will also be easy to avoid the pain of not being able to have something you desire, a pain which would upset your state of ataraxia.

But if you are only satisfied with vintage champagne, that might not be so easily found.

You might not be able to afford it, or the bar where your friends are meeting might not serve it, or the vintage might have run out because you have drunk it all on previous hedonistic nights out.

Your likelihood of experiencing pain goes up as you become more exacting in your standards of what you need to bring you pleasure.

So, although hedonism assumes that we seek out pleasure and avoid pain at all times, it might be worth remembering that more modest pleasures can be easier to find, and that might bring you less pain in the long term.

And while we might not always think of ourselves as pleasure seekers, every time we sit on a comfy chair rather than a bed of nails, we are making a hedonistic choice.

 Now if you'll excuse me, I must get back to my sweets. www.larryweaver.com