Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
enjoyment in that which is fraught with dangers, fear, anxiety and
other troubles, the possibility of our obtaining pleasure pure and
unalloyed is reduced to a minimum. The principle of Epicurus is to live
in freedom and ease, and with the mind at rest, and to this end it is
needful to renounce much of that which men allow to sway them, and in
which they find their pleasure. The life of a Stoic is therefore but
little different from that of an Epicurean who keeps well before his
eyes what Epicurus enjoins.
It might perhaps occur to us that the Cyrenaics had the same moral
principle as the Epicureans, but Diogenes Laërtius (X. 139, 136, 137)
shows us the difference that there was between them. The Cyrenaics
rather made pleasure as a particular thing their end, while Epicurus,
on the contrary, regarded it as a means, since he asserted painlessness
to be pleasure, and allowed of no intermediate state. “Neither do the
Cyrenaics recognize pleasure in rest (καταστηματικήν), but only in the
determination of motion,” or as something affirmative, that consists
in the enjoyment of the pleasant; “Epicurus, on the contrary, admits
both—the pleasure of the body as well as that of the soul.” He meant
by this that pleasure in rest is negative, as the absence of the
unpleasant, and also an inward contentment, whereby rest is maintained
within the mind. Epicurus explained these two kinds of pleasure more
clearly as follows: “Freedom from fear and desire (ἀταραξία) and from
pain and trouble (ἀπονία) are the passive pleasures (καταστηματικὶα
ἡδοναί),”—the setting of our affections on nothing which we may run the
risk of losing; pleasures of the senses, on the other hand, like “joy
and mirth (χαρὰ δὲ καὶ εὐφροσύνη), are pleasures involving movement
(κατὰ κίνησιν ἐνεργείᾳ βλέπονται.9)” The former pleasures Epicurus held
to be the truest and highest. “Besides this, pain of the body was held
by the Cyrenaics to be worse than sorrow of the soul, while with the
Epicureans this is reversed.”