Epicurus was especially concerned that he and his friends learn to analyse their anxieties about money, illness, death and the supernatural. If one thought rationally about mortality, one would, Epicurus argued, realize that there was nothing but oblivion after death, and that ‘what is no trouble when it arrives is an idle worry in anticipation.’ It was senseless to alarm oneself in advance about a state which one would never experience:
There is nothing dreadful in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.
Sober analysis calmed the mind; it spared Epicurus’s friends the furtive glimpses of difficulties that would have haunted them in the unreflective environment beyond the Garden.
Wealth is of course unlikely ever to make anyone miserable. But the crux of Epicurus’s argument is that if we have money without friends, freedom and an analysed life, we will never be truly happy. And if we have them, but are missing the fortune, we will never be unhappy.
To highlight what is essential for happiness and what may, if one is denied prosperity through social injustice or economic turmoil, be forgone without great regrets, Epicurus divided our needs into three categories:
Of the desires, some are natural and necessary. Others are natural but unnecessary. And there are desires that are neither natural nor necessary.
WHAT IS AND IS NOT ESSENTIAL FOR HAPPINESS
Natural and
Natural but
Neither natural
necessary
unnecessary
nor necessary
Friends
Grand house
Fame
Freedom
Private baths
Power
Thought (about main
Banquets
sources of anxiety:
Servants
death, illness,
Fish, meat
poverty, superstition)
Food, shelter, clothes
Crucially for those unable to make or afraid of losing money, Epicurus’s tripartite division suggested that happiness was dependent on some complex psychological goods but relatively independent of material ones, beyond the means required to purchase some warm clothes, somewhere to live and something to eat – a set of priorities designed to provoke thought in those who had equated happiness with the fruition of grand financial schemes, and misery with a modest income.
To plot the Epicurean relation between money and happiness on a graph, money’s capacity to deliver happiness is already present in small salaries and will not rise with the largest. We will not cease being happy with greater outlay, but we will not, Epicurus insisted, surpass levels of happiness already available to those on a limited income.
RELATION OF HAPPINESS TO MONEY FOR SOMEONE WITH FRIENDS, FREEDOM, ETC
.
The analysis depended on a particular understanding of happiness. For Epicurus, we are happy if we are not in active pain. Because we suffer active pain if we lack nutrients and clothes, we must have enough money to buy them. But suffering is too strong a word to describe what will occur if we are obliged to wear an ordinary cardigan rather than a cashmere one or to eat a sandwich rather than sea scallops. Hence the argument that:
Plain dishes offer the same pleasure as a luxurious table, when the pain that comes from want is taken away.
Whether we regularly eat meals like the one on the right or like the one on the left cannot be the decisive factor in our state of mind.
(Ill. 9.1)
(Ill. 9.2)
As for eating meat, it relieves neither any of our nature’s stress nor a desire whose non-satisfaction would give rise to pain … What it contributes to is not life’s maintenance but variation of pleasures … like drinking of exotic wines, all of which our nature is quite capable of doing without.
It may be tempting to attribute this disparagement of luxury to the primitive range of products available to the rich in the undeveloped economy of Hellenistic Greece. Yet the argument may still be defended by pointing to an imbalance in the ratio of price to happiness in products of later ages.
(Ill. 9.3)
We would not be happy with the vehicle on the left but no friends; with a villa but no freedom; with linen sheets but too much anxiety to sleep. So long as essential non-material needs are unattended, the line on the graph of happiness will remain stubbornly low.
RELATION OF HAPPINESS TO MONEY FOR SOMEONE WITHOUT FRIENDS, FREEDOM, ETC
.
Nothing satisfies the man who is not satisfied with a little.
To avoid acquiring what we do not need or regretting what we cannot afford, we should ask rigorously the moment we desire an expensive object whether we are right to do so. We should undertake a series of thought experiments in which we imagine ourselves projected in time to the moment when our desires have been realized, in order to gauge our likely degree of happiness:
The following method of inquiry must be applied to every desire: What will happen to me if what I long for is accomplished? What will happen if it is not accomplished?
A method which, though no examples of it survive, must have followed at least five steps – which may without injustice be sketched in the language of an instruction manual or recipe book.
1. Identify a project for happiness.
In order to be happy on holiday, I must live in a villa
.
2. Imagine that the project may be false. Look for exceptions to the supposed link between the desired object and happiness. Could one possess the desired object but not be happy? Could one be happy but not have the desired object?
Could I spend money on a villa and still not be happy?
Could I be happy on holiday and not spend as much money as on a villa?
3. If an exception is found, the desired object cannot be a necessary and sufficient cause of happiness.
It is possible to have a miserable time in a villa if, for example, I feel friendless and isolated
.
It is possible for me to be happy in a tent if, for example, I am with someone I love and feel appreciated by
.
4. In order to be accurate about producing happiness, the initial project must be nuanced to take the exception into account.
In so far as I can be happy in an expensive villa, this depends on being with someone I love and feel appreciated by
.
I can be happy without spending money on a villa, as long as I am with someone I love and feel appreciated by
.
5. True needs may now seem very different from the confused initial desire.
Happiness depends more on the possession of a congenial companion than a well-decorated villa
.
The possession of the greatest riches does not resolve the agitation of the soul nor give birth to remarkable joy. (Ill. 9.4)
5
Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them? Because of an error similar to that of the migraine sufferer who drills a hole in the side of his skulclass="underline" because expensive objects can feel like plausible solutions to needs we don’t understand. Objects mimic in a material dimension what we require in a psychological one. We need to rearrange our minds but are lured towards new shelves. We buy a cashmere cardigan as a substitute for the counsel of friends.