The Theory of Pleasure According to Epicurus 4 7 The Theory of Pleasure According to Epicurus Victor Brochard Translated and edited by Eve Grace Colorado College
[email protected] Note: Victor Brochard (1848-1907) was a French scholar whose work was praised very highly by, among others, Friedrich Nietzsche and Leo Strauss. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche described Brochard’s The Greek Skeptics as a “superb study” (1967, 243). During a course on Cicero given in the spring quarter at the University of Chicago in 1959, Strauss praised Brochard as among the greatest students of Greek philosophy prior to the First World War, and described this article as one of the rare cases in which, in his view, a problem has been properly solved. “La théorie du plaisir d’après Épicure” was first published in Journal des Savants (1904, 156-70, 205-13, 284-90), then reprinted in a collection of Brochard’s articles entitled Études de Philosophie Ancienne et de Philosophie Moderne (Paris: Vrin, 1954). It is here translated into English for the first time and reprinted by kind permission of Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin. I All those who have studied the moral philosophy of Epicu- rus with some care know that while the philosopher defines the sovereign good as pleasure, he gives to this word a very particular meaning which is not that of ordinary speech or of common opinion (Schiller 1902; cf. Guyau 1878; Usener 1887; Natorp 1893).1 But what exactly is this meaning? How did Epicurus conceive of pleasure? Here the difficulty begins. Most historians, perhaps excepting only Guyau, accept that according to Epicurus pleasure © 2009 Interpretation, Inc.