← See the axis · Relation to desire
ArgumentThe Epicurean measure
To sort your desires is to free yourself from those that, by nature, can never satisfy.
Supports
Epicurus ·
- Our greatest torments do not arise from a lack of bread, but from desires with no natural limit: ever more wealth, power, recognition. As nothing sates them, they never leave us at rest.
- Now desires can be told apart: some are natural and easy to satisfy, and satisfying them suffices to remove pain; others are empty and measureless, and it is from pursuing them, not from failing to reach them, that trouble comes.
- By examining one's desires so as to satisfy the first and dismiss the second, one reaches a that no longer depends on what one does not control: not the excitement of gratification, but , that absence of trouble, stable because it rests on oneself alone.
Therefore So wisdom is neither to inflame one's desires nor to extinguish them all, but to measure them: a sober contentment, and lasting because it is within our reach.
How far does this reasoning convince you?
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Deepenings
The fourfold remedy
- The Epicureans summed up their wisdom in four formulas, the : the gods are not to be feared, death is nothing, happiness is easy to attain, pain is easy to bear.
- The sorting of desires is its practical heart: it is because happiness rests on little, on simple and true desires, that it is « easy to attain » and beyond the reach of fortune.
How far does this reasoning convince you?
Not at all
Entirely
Put to the test
Objection