Writing in the fourth century BC, Epicurus was the Greek philosopher of pleasure. He said the 'root of every good is the pleasure of the stomach. Even wisdom and culture must be referred to this.'
Rumours swiftly spread about Epicurus' gastronomic hedonism. In one tale, Epicurus had to vomit twice each day to accommodate the amounts of food he consumed and wished to consume still. If this is correct, Epicurus may well be the first bulimic in the history of western philosophy.
But Epicurus was no glut, just a pleasure-seeker, and fortunately 'binge and purge' was not the kind of pleasure he had in mind. At the end of a meal, Epicurus says, '[p]lain dishes offer the same pleasure as a luxurious table, when the pain that comes from want is taken away'.
I'm a student of Greek philosophy and I'm distressed to read these words. I like Epicurus, and his philosophy. But I don't like plain dishes.
Unlike Epicurus, I'm a glut. I eat too much and too quickly, and I know it. What pleases me are vast quantities of food that's heavily spiced and, some would say, over-seasoned.
I eat this way because that's how I was raised to eat: by parents who taught me from an early age that generous portions are the only portions one should serve, to oneself and especially to one's guests. Quantity matters. This is how they ate growing up when there was never enough food to go around.
Today, my dinner table, like my parents', is laden with the foods of childhood. I've come to eat, by choice, what they, by necessity, were forced to when growing up poor in 1950s Taiwan.
This I understand. What I don't understand is the remark my Dad will often make after he's eaten way too much — the remark that 'everything tasted better back then, when he was young'.
That was, until I read Epicurus.
Epicurus makes clear that food is pleasurable to the extent that it satiates a need. This reiterates what he says more generally about pleasure being the absence of pain. Pleasure exists where pain does not, and vice versa. Given this, Epicurus may be best understood as having advocated the absence of suffering and not the active pursuit of pleasure. Once suffering is alleviated then pleasure will naturally ensue.
However, the pleasure we experience in any given circumstance depends, in large part, on what it is that we actually suffer