7 ms·

Well, that makes almost everything humans do hedonic, doesn't it. Happiness in this case probably comprises of a state of mind different of perceptual pleasure

• pasquinelli 10y ago
  Epicurus advocated learning as the best form of pleasure because you can't do it to excess very easily like you can with things like eating, drinking, etc. The various helenistic schools of philosophy were all searching for what constituted virtue. They were quite explicitly after what was good about life and how to organize life around that. The fact you can understand every every human motivation in hedonistic terms is no coincidence; it's the justification for the philosophy, the reason there was a school of hedonism.
• chibolo 10y ago
  "Hedonic" and Hedonism should be defined differently. The semi-last paragraph gives a good point to what Hedonism is. "That is why the real Epicurus – in contrast to the crude sybarite invented by his detractors – denounced the rapidly rotting fruits of dissipation and excess. The constant pursuit of intense pleasures will in fact backfire, according to Epicurus, because it leads to the psychological hell of enslavement to unsatisfiable appetites. The would-be hedonist must take care to ensure that the pain of overreaching desire does not ruin his peace of mind and thereby defeat his original aim of securing a balance of pleasure over pain."