In any case, I’m certain that you know more than I do about these dudes, and can set me straight.

Also, I am indeed planning to post on “evil” as the absence/distortion of good when I get a chance. Or, rather, when I overcome the various evils that stand in my way.

Rather than predicating happiness on the ability to navigate between a dichotomy of real and apparent goods, we might with Epicurus consider an ethical theory that assumes we have reached a level of society sufficient to satisfy the external conditions of happiness: i.e., Epicurus, Aristotle, and probably a good many of the readers of this blog are reliably fed, clothed, sheltered, etc. Now, let’s grant with A.A. Long that Epicurus takes it as self-evident that pleasure and the avoidance of pain (desire and aversion) “are the natural motivations and objectives of all human (and animal) action” (Long, 187). Epicurean ethics is accordingly not about trying to orient people toward the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain: that is axiomatic, a given. Rather, it is a program that attempts to address how, despite having readily available in our external environment the basics of (animal?) happiness (food to satisfy hunger, clothes to keep warm, etc.), we can still be so very unhappy. From A.A. Long:

“Therefore, if [we] and other people continue to be unhappy, the impediment must be internal. On Epicurus’ diagnosis, the internal impediments can be reduced to two factors: irrational fears and vain and unlimited desires….The two internal impediments to happiness can be overcome by one thing – virtue, and in particular, the virtue of prudence, phronēsis. Prudence is the essential internal instrument of our acquiring the pleasures that are readily available and of enduring the pains that we cannot avoid. The happy life, as Epicurus conceives of it, needs to be a highly intelligent life – one in which we see the utility for our happiness of applying rational judgement to every source of pleasure or pain that we encounter…[this] is a mental disposition, a totally rational outlook on life, a cast of mind which has insight into the causes of every choice and avoidance, and which banishes the opinions that beset souls…with the greatest confusion” (Long, 187-188).

This perhaps contrasts with the view of Epicurus as an unbridled sensualist/hedonist. So why does Epicurus so often seem to have such a negative ethical rap? Again, from A.A. Long:

“Moral philosophers frequently contrasted with Epicurus (for instance, Plato and Aristotle) would completely endorse his claim that a truly pleasurable life must be a virtuous life, and that a virtuous life cannot fail to be endowed with pleasure. This is not to say, however, that Epicurus regards prudence and the other ethical virtues as intrinsically good and desirable, as Platonists, Peripatetics, and Stoics do” (Long, 188). Here’s the kicker: the value of virtue for Epicurus is strictly instrumental, with virtue made both subordinate and subservient to pleasure, and it is this that “has drawn heavy fire against Epicurus from antiquity to the present day” (Id.).

Robert, how about some more on “bad” or “evil” as the absence of good rather than a positive existent?