The pleasures of tranquillity

Alex Voorhoeve

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Epicurus posited that the best life involves the greatest pleasures. He also held that it involves attaining tranquillity. Many commentators, including Ken Binmore, have expressed scepticism that these two claims are compatible. For, they argue, Epicurus’ tranquil life is so austere that it is hard to see how it could be maximally pleasurable. Here, I offer an Epicurean account of the pleasures of tranquillity. I also consider different ways of valuing lives from a hedonistic point of view. Benthamite hedonists value lives by the sum of pleasures minus the sum of pains, weighted by intensity and duration. Meanwhile, Binmore proposes that Epicurus valued lives by their worst episode. In contrast, I outline an Epicurean argument for why the best life is one in which a person attains tranquillity and tastes its pleasures until death.

Keywords: Epicurus; well-being; hedonism; value of life (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2022-12-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Homo Oeconomicus, 31, December, 2022, 39(2-4), pp. 185 – 197. ISSN: 0943-0180

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/113342/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:113342

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager (lseresearchonline@lse.ac.uk).