It might be my contrarian nature - when I was a teenager, I asked for a Zune instead of an iPod. So in the great debate of classical revival, my instincts tell me to swing Epicurean.

The ultimate goal of Stoicism is “living in agreement with nature.” The ultimate goal of Epicureanism is “freedom from fear of God.”

These are both reductive statements; Stoicism places high value on a life of virtue and Epicureanism places high value on pleasure.

What happens more often than not in contemporary conversation, however, is that the goal of the Epicurean is physical, material hedonism, shirking away from society, and “not feeling the troubles of their own life” (to paraphrase Seneca). But let’s look under the hood.

The Epicurean is tasked with defining pleasure, which is done in four different ways: mental vs physical pleasure and constant (katastematic) vs active (kinetic) pleasure. Because of the immediacy and subsequent end of kinetic physical pleasure (such as eating), greater emphasis was placed on katastematic mental pleasure - constant mental pleasure. What does this mean, practically? It’s hard to hypnotize yourself into a state of constant wellbeing. For the Epicurean, this meant freedom from mental pain: freedom from fear and anxiety - freedom from the fear of God being the highest possible pleasure.

The Stoic is tasked with defining virtue, largely. Correct me if I’m wrong! Obviously, this mini-essay is in favor of Epicureanism and I saved myself the pain of over-researching for a forum post.

So what is virtue? Stoics seem to define this as participation in society - this is where the Stoic “most correctly” criticizes the Epicurean.

I don’t disagree that virtuosity in life may be best defined when one is in “full participation” - action within the social sphere. However, I wonder how well we understand our intentions and limitations, especially when considering the possibility that every social interaction is an exchange of power¹.

So is it virtuous to participate in a society that takes advantage of you - whether you know it or not? Is it more or less virtuous to participate in a social interaction wherein you are taken advantage of? Is it more or less virtuous to participate knowingly or unknowingly of your complicity in being taken advantage of? Does it matter?

Perhaps you could say I am an apologist for those who are abandoning or opting out of social participation. Largely, I argue for self-education.

Foucault, who I hope is replacing Marx as the over-assigned philosophical read in undergraduate education, argued that revolution begins with the reclamation of the individual physiology. This is in contrast with Marx’s claim that revolution begins with taking back the means of production.

If you were to follow through with reading on the Four Dimensions of Power, you may come to the conclusion that Foucault implies that through reclamation of individual physiology, you reclaim your capacity for violence, which is the most fungible and flexible power resource over which the individual has immediate and tangible physical agency to develop. Implicit in this is also that the tools of “mental” or “psychic” power (education) have been coopted: i.e. “they” brainwash you, and even in the pursuit of developing the ability to “mentally coerce" someone (argue for a point of view), you may just be mentally coercing yourself into another position of psychic submission toward an authority that may not be in your best interest². But there is no argument as to how much weight you can carry: how much force a strike you may blow contains.

A bit edgy!

What is not implicitly implied (ha) in Foucault, however, is the power found in pain-free movement; a physical health that is defined by transcending the definition of physical autonomy.

“Health” is largely becoming another method of coercing behavior into a certain mode of standards, but that’s another essay. Health as defined as capacity for physical action that is free from pain - to me that is power. And it is a power that is rather pleasurable - although to argue for it might be even more.