A New Stop on Our Journey #113

Gearing up for Epicurus

Erich Fromm

Dear friends of Daily Philosophy,

as April comes to a close, we also arrive at the end of our journey with Erich Fromm and Marx. For the past two months, we have been exploring the idea that we’d be better off if we lived more in the mode of being rather than in the mode of having; and that our societies and the capitalist structure of our world are to blame for much of the human unhappiness that we see around us every day.

On our trip through this year’s six great philosophies of happiness, we will next see what Epicurus and his theory has in store for us. For over two thousand years, Epicurean philosophy, along with Stoicism and Aristotle’s ethics, has been one of the main three ancient schools of happiness that survived the test of time and that still inspire us today — and I’m very excited to delve into it together with you in the coming weeks and to see what we can all get from it for our own lives!

One Year, Six Ways to Happiness

In case you joined this newsletter some time since February, let me briefly summarise again what we’re doing here. The first article in this series explains it in more detail, but the main idea is that we are trying to live six different philosophies of live in the course of the year 2021.

January and February were all about Aristotle and how we can achieve happiness by learning how to use our virtues better and by constantly engaging with the world, trying to lead more meaningful, more engaged, and more fulfilled lives. Aristotle has an elaborate theory about how this is supposed to work. In the 20th century, Aristotle’s theory was modernised and applied to our present world by thinkers as diverse as Bertrand Russell and Richard Taylor.