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Tranquility of the Soul
A short essay on Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus
One of my favorite short works of Philosophy is Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus. It’s not a complicated work full of philosophical jargon and complicated theory.
It’s a straightforward letter that contains wisdom about the practicing of philosophy, attitudes about death, and perhaps most importantly to us in the modern age, the seeking of pleasure and what pleasure is.
As I mentioned earlier, none of these are investigations like future analytic philosophers. He makes claims and that’s that. They are his wisdom, and I think that’s important to keep in mind.
Something I’ve learned over the years is that it’s all to easy to overthink these things. Thinking itself requires prudence — we need to know what it means to think the correct amount about a certain subject. Alan Watts once correctly said, and I’m paraphrasing, “A person who thinks all the time, has nothing to think about except thoughts.”
Some philosophers may regard this as a good and necessary thing, but I think it is a failure. It is a failure because if all you think about are thoughts, you’ve given up the way to live peacefully and harmoniously with the world, and you end up as a detached creature who seems to be no longer human. You live in your own head with all…
