ABSTRACT
Epicureans were hedonists: They held that pleasure is the good and a well-lived life is one that pursues pleasure and avoids pain. They created a theory with lasting appeal in part because of their counterintuitive claims about what pleasure is and how we ought to manage our lives to pursue it. According to the Epicureans, the highest pleasure arises from a healthy, pain- and disturbance-free state of the mind and body, and so a life of simple pleasures and natural and necessary desires produces the greatest happiness.
