Epicuro:: Placer (ἡδονὴ)

Abstract

“Pleasure” (ἡδονὴ) and the philosopher Epicurus of Samos have often been placed on the horizon of a certain discredit in the History of Ideas. Pleasure has long been a subsidiary issue in the order of philosophical speculation. To this we must add that Epicurus has the dubious fortune of being considered a dispensable philosopher who articulates his global proposal around a minor concept in the axiological scale of Western Philosophy, where govern the Being, the Idea, the Form, the Substance, God, Consciousness or the Absolute Spirit.

In spite of this, in this article I will deal with Epicurus and the function that the word “pleasure” (ἡδονὴ) occupies in his thought as the fundamental word of philosophy. A philosophy conceived as a daily practice of interrogation, criticism and purification of one’s beliefs, based on reasoning and aimed to eliminate, as far as possible, physical pain, psychic suffering and existential servitude. An exercise, therefore, which presents itself as an art of one’s own existence and which is ultimately confronted with the non-trivial question that crossed the thinking of Socrates and Plato: How to live? What is a good life and what is the role of pleasure in its design?