Epicureanism and Stoicism: VCE Philosophy
“Epicurean and Stoic conceptions of the good life, including tranquillity, pleasure and the role of virtue”
Epicurus holds that the good life is pleasure, but pleasure understood as ataraxia, freedom from bodily pain and mental disturbance, achieved by satisfying only natural and necessary desires and overcoming the fear of death. The Stoics hold that the good life is virtue alone: only virtue is genuinely good, externals like health and wealth are merely preferred indifferents, and flourishing comes from living in accordance with reason and nature, accepting what is outside our control with equanimity (apatheia). Both prize tranquillity and self-sufficiency. Epicureanism is charged with counselling a withdrawn, risk-averse life; Stoicism is charged with a superhuman detachment that asks us to be indifferent to real losses.
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In the current study design (accredited from 2025) the good life is Unit 3. This page keeps its original web address. Epicurus and the Stoics are background for the Unit 3 set texts, not set texts themselves.
What this dot point is asking
The previous study design asked you to explain two ancient conceptions of the good life that rival Aristotle's, Epicureanism and Stoicism, set out what each says the good life consists in and how to achieve it, and evaluate them. The high-band answer distinguishes Epicurean pleasure (correctly understood) from crude hedonism, distinguishes the Stoic placing of the good entirely in virtue, and presses objections about whether each ideal is liveable or desirable.
Epicurus on pleasure and tranquillity
Epicurus is a hedonist: pleasure is the good and pain the bad, and a good life is a pleasant one. But he means something subtler than the pursuit of intense sensual enjoyment. The highest pleasure is katastematic (static) pleasure, the settled state of having no pain in the body (aponia) and no disturbance in the mind (ataraxia), rather than kinetic pleasures of active gratification. Once pain is removed, pleasure is at its limit and cannot be increased, only varied. So the good life is achieved not by piling up enjoyments but by removing pain and anxiety.
To do this, Epicurus classifies desires: natural and necessary (food, shelter, friendship, freedom from fear), natural but unnecessary (luxuries), and vain and empty (fame, unlimited wealth). We should satisfy the first, moderate the second, and reject the third, because unnecessary desires breed anxiety and dependence. He also targets the two great sources of mental disturbance: fear of the gods (answered by his view that the gods do not meddle in human affairs) and fear of death (answered by the argument that death is nothing to us, since where death is we are not, and where we are death is not, so there is no subject left to be harmed). Friendship and a simple, withdrawn life are central to Epicurean tranquillity.
Stoic virtue and acceptance
The Stoics (Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius) take the opposite view of externals. For them the good life, eudaimonia, consists in virtue alone. Only virtue is truly good and only vice truly bad; everything else, health, wealth, reputation, even life itself, is an indifferent, neither good nor bad. Such things may be preferred or dispreferred indifferents (it is reasonable to prefer health), but they cannot add to or subtract from a person's flourishing, which depends solely on the state of their character and reason.
The key practical doctrine is the dichotomy of control (Epictetus): some things are up to us (our judgements, choices, attitudes) and some are not (our bodies, possessions, what others do). The wise person invests their concern only in what is up to them and accepts the rest as it comes, achieving apatheia, freedom from destructive passions. Living well is living in agreement with nature and reason, which for the Stoics is also the rational order of the cosmos. The sage is self-sufficient and serene because nothing external can touch the one thing that matters, their virtue.
Evaluation
Both views have clear strengths. They locate the good life largely within our own control, answering the objection from luck that troubles Aristotle: if flourishing depends only on managing desire (Epicurus) or on virtue alone (Stoics), then fortune cannot destroy it. Both offer practical, teachable regimes for reducing anxiety and increasing equanimity, which is why both have been revived as therapies of life.
The objections differ. Against Epicureanism: defining pleasure as the absence of pain seems to confuse a neutral state with a positive good, and the prescription to minimise desire and withdraw from public life can look like a timid, diminished existence that avoids the risks (love, ambition, commitment) that give life much of its value. Critics also note tension in valuing friendship highly while grounding everything in one's own tranquillity. Against Stoicism: declaring health, loved ones and one's own life mere indifferents seems to demand a detachment that is neither possible nor desirable. If the death of one's child genuinely makes no difference to one's flourishing, the view appears to deny something deeply true about human love and loss; if it does make a difference, then externals are not indifferent after all. The Stoic can reply that one may act lovingly while not being destroyed by loss, but the line between healthy resilience and cold indifference is hard to hold.
Judgement: both schools make a real advance on Aristotle by securing the good life against fortune, and both offer usable disciplines for tranquillity. But each buys security at a cost to richness: Epicurus by shrinking the scope of desire and engagement, the Stoics by demanding an indifference to external goods that strains against the value we rightly place on relationships and projects. Between them, Stoicism is the more rigorous and inspiring but the more psychologically demanding, while Epicureanism is more achievable but more deflationary. Neither fully displaces the Aristotelian thought that a complete good life includes some external goods, not merely the right inner attitude toward their loss.
Exam prompt: Compare the Epicurean and Stoic responses to misfortune and judge which better secures the good life.
Step 1: state each response
Set out the Epicurean strategy (reduce desire to the natural and necessary, withdraw from risky ambitions, and dissolve the fears of gods and death) and the Stoic strategy (place the entire good in virtue and apply the dichotomy of control, accepting whatever lies outside it with apatheia).
Step 2: find the shared aim and the key difference
Show that both aim at tranquillity and self-sufficiency, but differ on externals: Epicurus minimises engagement so little can be lost, while the Stoic stays engaged yet treats losses as indifferents.
Step 3: press an objection to each
Object that Epicureanism buys safety by shrinking a life worth living (avoiding love and ambition), and that Stoicism demands an indifference to real losses that strains against the value we place on relationships.
Step 4: reach a verdict
Judge which response better secures the good life and why, for example that Stoicism is more inspiring but more demanding, while Epicureanism is more achievable but more deflationary. The reasoned verdict earns the top band.
Epicurus is a hedonist whose highest pleasure is ataraxia, the absence of pain and disturbance, not active indulgence; the Stoics are not hedonists at all and treat pleasure as an indifferent, placing the entire good in virtue. Getting this contrast right (pleasure-based versus virtue-based, despite both prizing tranquillity) is what a precise comparison requires.
Do not equate Epicureanism with the modern sense of epicurean as a lover of fine food and luxury. Epicurus recommended a simple life and the moderation of desire, and counted vain desires for luxury and fame as sources of disturbance to be rejected. Using the popular sense reverses his actual view and loses marks.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of VCAA exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice5 marksa. Outline the Stoic claim that external goods such as health and wealth are merely preferred indifferents. b. Evaluate whether the Stoic view that the good life consists in virtue alone is a convincing account of the good life.Show worked answer →
Five marks across two parts (2 + 3).
Part a (2 marks). The Stoics hold that only virtue is genuinely good and only vice genuinely bad; everything else, including health, wealth and reputation, is an indifferent that cannot add to or subtract from flourishing. It is reasonable to prefer health to sickness, so such things are preferred (rather than dispreferred) indifferents, but preferring them does not make them good, because the good depends solely on the state of one's reason and character.
Part b (3 marks). Explain the view, then weigh it. Strength: it secures the good life against fortune, since nothing external can damage the one thing that matters. Objection: treating the loss of a loved one or one's own health as a mere indifferent seems to demand a detachment that is neither possible nor desirable; if such losses do make a real difference to a life, then externals are not indifferent after all. Reach a justified verdict, for example that the view is admirably robust but psychologically over-demanding.
Practice2 marksExplain why Epicurus argues that death is nothing to us.Show worked answer →
Two marks for one correctly explained Epicurean reason.
Epicurus argues that all good and bad consist in sensation, and death is the absence of sensation. So while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist; there is no subject left to be harmed. Since death can be experienced by no one, the fear of it is irrational and removing that fear is part of achieving ataraxia, the tranquillity that is the highest pleasure. Full marks identify that harm requires a subject who experiences it, and death leaves no such subject.