Living for Pleasure

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2024

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Over 2,000 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher, made a simple yet bold claim. The key to the good life, he said, is to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Is it really that easy? To answer that question, we turn to Emily Austin, a professor of philosophy at Wake Forest and author of “Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life.” (This episode first aired in January 2023.)

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn presents.
0:05.8	Summertime and the living is easy.
0:11.5	Warm breezes, fresh salads, watermelon, corn on the cob, frisbee on the beach, getting
0:17.9	a little too hot and jumping in the water, squirt guns.
0:22.0	I hope your summer is filled with some of these pleasures. This time of year
0:26.3	I find myself thinking wouldn't it be nice if my whole life was like this?
0:31.4	In honor of this happy season we're sharing one of our favorite
0:34.4	episodes from our archive, a conversation with Emily Austin about her
0:38.7	delightful and surprisingly deep book, Living for Pleasure, an Epicurean Guide to Life. a Instead, they were modest philosophers focused on achieving something they called
0:54.6	Ataraxia, which is the serene contentment that comes over us when we are anxiety-free.
1:01.1	Ataraxia. That's the vibe I'm going for in the summertime and not just in the summertime. Epicureanism turns
1:09.9	out to be a compelling worldview. I might be, as it turns out, an Epicurean. What does that
1:17.4	mean? How do we get there? Re-listening to this conversation with Emily reminded me how.
1:25.0	I'm Rufus Griskam, and this is the next big idea.
1:29.0	Today, the 2,000- old case for Hedonism. So, Do you like pain? It's a funny question. Who likes pain?
1:57.0	Most of us, I think, would say that some suffering is part of a good life, and we admire those who suffer well.
2:08.0	There was a saying in the 1980s when I was growing up,
2:11.0	no pain, no gain, a workout mantra immortalized by Jane Fonda.
2:15.0	But some quipster put no pain, no pain, on a bumper sticker, and I remember thinking,
2:22.0	that's more like it.
2:23.0	Must we be massacres.
2:25.0	On the one hand you might say that
	...

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