Epicurean Desire Therapists
The Epicureans would not recommend that we be “Epicures”, as we understand the term today. Why not?
Jennifer Baker published an enlightening article on real Epicureanism in the online blog of “Psychology Today”:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-love-wisdom/201105/the-real-epicures/comments
which I commented as follows:
The real Epicureans walked their talk – for 800 years. No other philosophical school has kept its tenets unchanged for such an impressively long span of time. The ancient Epicureans had their own education system and sustainable communities. As do today’s body-builders, they built their chosen attitudes through daily exercise. Many of their ‘spiritual exercises’ were shared by the other character builder guild, the Stoics. Although the systematic communal and individual practice was interrupted when the Roman emperor Justinian closed the four still-existing philosophy schools in Athens, many of their tenets and attitudes were later studied and cultivated by philosophers, statesmen and psychologists. Their habit-forming practices of self-scrutiny are at the very basis of ‘modern’ behavior therapies . Martha Nussbaum’s “The Therapy of Desire” is an excellent illustration of the ancient desire therapies.
Alain de Botton gives a visually palatable introduction to Epicurus’s original philosophy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LTTRQcZ8c
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