Stoics Vs. Epicureanism

After Aristotle’s rein, a new age on philosophy took subject matters into a new direction, emphasizing on emotion, and unorthodox methods. Two of the four iconic philosophical groups who greatly influenced society on how to obtain happiness were the stoics and the Epicureanism. The difference between these groups and their predecessors was not their end goal, like happiness, but the unconventional ways they chose to achieve their idea. Take for instance Epicureanism, they emphasized “on an ideal for living though what they called ataraxic or tranquility of soul, while Stoicism took the approach of controlling their reactions in inevitable events. In spite of both groups different methods, philosophers spawned these groups under the same circumstances. …show more content…
The creation of stoicism and epicureanism was the result of the public’s emptiness, as the ideas that the groups provided gave individuals a notion of how gain a better understanding of one’s role in life.
A Epicurean way of life staggers on the importance of the regulation and the continuous consumption of pleasure in the hopes to obtain a lifestyle with no pain. For an Epicurean the body and soul have a unrelenting appetite for pleasure, and how we choose to feed this hunger is what deciphers if one gains happiness. Humans are seen as cog placed in a complex system of life that drive beings to pursue pleasure. James Fieser and Samuel Enoch Stumpf described a Epicurean perspective the best as if, “the origin of all things in a mechanical way and placed humans into the scheme of things as just another small mechanism whose nature leads us to seek pleasure “ (Stumpf, Fieser 104). Although there is an infinite amount of ways to fulfill a human’s pleasure, they believed beings hold a responsibility …show more content…
In other words Stoics know they cannot control situation that are given to them but they are able to control their attitude towards them. They felt it was useless to fear the inevitable because humans are unable to escape this, therefore its rational to control the fear we have towards that situation. Not to confuse this feeling of no fear with not caring, Stoics try to keep the fear of the future to as minimum as possible. Living by the motto ‘”nothing to fear but fear itself’” (Stumpf, Fieser 106). One of the core differences between an Epicurean and a Stoic way of life is how they deal with emotion. Stoics believe that a human’s responsibility is to control their attitude and to practically ignore innate emotion, with this in mind they see reactions like fear as a setback that can result to anxiety. Epicureanism on the other hand sees the body as car and pleasure like fuel. An Epicurean is expected to be more aware of their pleasures and their reactions, because if they react too much then they are pleasuring too much from the experience, forbidding them from