As I explained in the last post, Epicureans believe that we all have a fundamental desire to pursue pleasure, and that to fulfill this desire, we'll actually sometimes have to avoid some pleasures. Specifically, we need to avoid pain-creating pleasures (e.g. doing hard drugs) and even pursue pleasure-creating pains (e.g. taking awful-tasting medicine).
That's certainly a tough lesson for many to learn, but it has the ring of truth to it, and, at least in my case, experience says it's often true. Perhaps you're one of the lucky ones who think all this is rather obvious and that there's not much to see here. Either way, lets look a little deeper because there's plenty more to see.
Do we really ALWAYS act to avoid pain and fear / to get pleasure?
Taking the claim that we always act to seek pleasure / avoid pain at face value may seem at times brilliantly simply and at other times a cliché or an uninformative tautology.
Consider the following:
Read the rest at my dissertation blog, Anger, Et Cetera Online
No comments:
Post a Comment