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You're listening to the Partial Exam of Life Episode 208, Part 2 on Epicurus.

We got into his views about pleasure, what motivates human action.

So you think maybe we're ready to talk about different ways in which this was applied historically,

could be applied in our lives, you know, just the practical upshot of this.

I mean, the whole Newspam's book is called The Therapy of Desire and is all about,

I haven't read the end of the book, so I don't know what our ultimate conclusion is,

but is looking at Epicurianism as well, stoicism and skepticism as practical philosophy

as something that we can use to cure ourselves.

And in fact, that is the function of philosophy that is to set us on the right path

that we are spiritually sick under normal circumstances.

You know, part of the context of this is a quote from Epicurus,

empty is that philosopher's argument by which no human suffering is therapeutically treated.

For just as there is no use in a medical art that does not cast out the sickness of the body.

So too, there is no use in philosophy if it is not throw out suffering from the soul.

Yep, that's Newspam's whole point throughout her book.

And she has a couple chapters on Aristotle before Epicurus is to explain this and to get into the contrast

and comparisons of what it could mean for philosophy to be healing and, you know,

what it has to claim to know about human nature.

In other words, the proper human functioning and then how it would recommend what tools it uses

to steer us toward that.

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