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Epicurus's Letter To Menoeceus

507 Words3 Pages

In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus discusses pleasure and desire and the human need to seek out pleasure. Epicurus explores the different kinds of desire and how they affect happiness. Happiness is the main goal. And happiness, is the maximization of pleasure. According to Epicurus there are three categories of desire that lead to pleasure. There are the natural and necessary desires, unnecessary and natural desires, and unnatural and unnecessary desires. Epicurus makes the difference between necessary and unnecessary desires very clear. Necessary desires produce happiness, such as desiring to be free of physical pain, or desiring inner peace. He writes that “the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and once this is …show more content…

What he is saying is that it is a waste of time to value capitalistic ideologies, for example, wealth and fame. He implies that we are so wrapped up in our unnecessary desires that it just clouds our minds with things that really aren't important. By giving into temptations one has lost the ability to have self control. Epicurus tells us that when it comes down to it we will always pick things that bring us pleasure. He says what we don't think about is that a lot of our decisions we have made in hopes of the pleasure we were looking for only caused us pain in the end. I agree with Epicurus’ teachings on desire and happiness. In today’s society people make decisions based on unnecessary desires in an attempt to find happiness. You could even go as far as to say that this is the root of society’s problems. Today, money equals happiness. This leads to corruption and a majority of our population living a materialistic

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