Why Epicurus Hated Sex - Philosophy Minis

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]He also mentions, for example, about sex as basically being a source of all misery that he can't see any reason why anyone would would a have sex and b have kids at any point. Of course, I've got two kids, which means I've had sex at least twice in my life.

[00:00:14]>> Congratulations.

[00:00:15]>> Thank you very much. You know, we have a diary. We >> Why did he Why did he not like sex?

[00:00:20]because and and I kind of agree why he's saying it is because he's the point he's making is that the consequences the impact of having sex with the wrong person at the wrong time can be bad and also as all Greeks >> there is a certain irrationality which comes on when your libido kicks in. Um >> Robin Williams, the late Robin Williams has this great quotation which I use in the book which is that um the good law of God um gave a gave men two heads and you can only think of one at any time.

[00:00:52]And you know I think >> you know there's a degree of truth to that that people who are lost in the um you know carnal throws of lust >> do tend to not think about the long-term games. So, I'm sure anyone who's watching this who's been on three pints deep on in IBA with some friends hasn't been thinking about the long-term consequences of their actions.

[00:01:13]>> Yeah, that's that's fair enough actually. Um, but that said, I enjoy sex.

[00:01:18]>> Yeah, you enjoy sex. I wondered the Yeah. I I wonder the extent to which like like like not releasing that libido >> would actually >> make because if if all what you're saying is the problem is >> that like lust sort of clouds your thoughts.

[00:01:35]>> Yes.

[00:01:36]>> Then the best thing you can do is get rid of that.

[00:01:37]>> You're right. Sadly lots of Epicuran documents are lost to us. So his masturbation diaries were lost.

[00:01:44]>> Yes. His to history.

[00:01:46]>> But we can only assume that maybe he did release his libido at some point. We don't know what hidden materials he was relying on.

[00:01:51]>> You know, it might be the case that, you know, use it or lose it. I think that is a case that people who don't seem to indulge their libido or do tend to >> wank need to carry on wanking.

[00:02:01]>> But other people swear by uh like controlling like like sort of keeping it in as it were.

[00:02:08]>> There's a Reddit about it, isn't there?

[00:02:09]No fap.

[00:02:10]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like the whole like sort of um if you if you just like store up your energy, then you can like redirect it into this and this and that. So maybe Epicurus was here on the tube today.

[00:02:23]There's obviously some testosterone companies massively paying for all of the billboards or the posters around.

[00:02:29]>> Maybe it increases your testosterone. I mean I'm sure the comment section will be alive with people on either side of the debate.

[00:02:36]>> I have had sex. I have masturbated. I will take heroin one day.

[00:02:42]>> Yeah. But I don't know. I don't know the science of it. Maybe it will internalize some kind of testosterone and make you better overall. And but the important point is that we're having that discussion in some way that you know we are taking happiness seriously. That should be part of the deliberation that if somebody is anxious and unhappy >> when they are wanking a lot >> yes >> then maybe they need to sit down and say well maybe my wanking is causing me to be unhappy and that's an important part of liberation. On the other hand, if you've got you've stopped wanking for let's say four or five months and enough to you know measure it as a kind of like an experiment and you are measurably less happy then perhaps it's not for you and this is true of >> I interviewed someone called Richard Bers neur neuroscientists about the cold about cold plunging as well that I think most people agreed to say that cold plunging is physiologically good for most people who have no underlying health conditions >> but for some people >> it can make it worse. it can make them worse. And also just the anxiety of waking up in the morning to get in a cold bath in the morning outweighs the physiological benefits of it. So you just got to sit down and make up that deliberation yourself. So that's the interesting thing and epicurionism and epicurionism is uh is >> caricatured as like oh just do the pleasurable thing in the sense that like oh you want to have the McDonald's oh you want to have a wank you know do do your thing whereas >> the yeah the epicurion has to has to believe that if it becomes apparent that this is not sort of prolonging a long-term happiness that it just becomes the wrong thing.

[00:04:06]>> Absolutely. And that also involves, of course, taking stock of your feelings.

[00:04:09]And you need to check in with your emotions. And this is why I think therapy is incredibly useful. And I think we should do more of it, not necessarily with clinical therapists, but with friends and with yourself in the diary or with philosophers. You know, you should do this checking in on your emotions and recognizing, well, actually, hang on, that was a wrong turn. And actually, I'm I'm worse off now. I feel more anxious. Or inversely, I feel happier. I really enjoy talking to Alex Okconor, so I'm going to do this every week. M um you know.

[00:04:37]>> Yeah. Yeah, man. I try so hard on this show not to do the podcast thing. I'm not I'm not like your I'm not like other podcasts. Oh yeah.

[00:04:44]>> But we've done AI consciousness. We're talking about nofap. We're talking about testosterone levels. I I fear that soon I will be too far down the >> rabbit hole. What what's else is on the you know people want to talk about choices, how to make better decisions, you know, relationship advice.

[00:04:59]>> Yeah. How to like fix your life in 12 easy steps and that kind of stuff.

[00:05:03]>> Exactly. I think >> which, >> you know, fair enough. Maybe that is what Epicuranism is kind of offering people though. A sort of a lot of the the ancient Greek schools are co-opted by the modern self-help. I actually when like cuz I knew I was going to be speaking to you. I I was in a bookshop yesterday >> and I remember like going into like Water St. and seeing basically this big sort of uh shelf of books and I took a picture because I was just staring at these books and it was like it had like the Atomic Habits thing and then it's got all the like Ryan Holliday's books and then it's got Robert Green and it's all things like you know >> like the power of positive thinking and dare to lead and >> discipline is destiny that's a Ryan Holiday one and you know like the happy index is another one here and uh you are a badass and >> like this kind of stuff how to talk to anyone and it's like there's this publishing phenomena >> where like everybody's but you could be writing a book >> about like ancient Greek metaphysics and the publisher will go how about we turn it into like how this ancient thinker can make you better at friendship yeah it's all about sort of >> it's being kind of co-opted right I wonder what you think about the extent to which as social media influencers, >> we risk playing into this watering down of philosophy by being like, let's talk about Epicurious, Epicurus, but let's do it in a way where I can call this episode, you know, how to be happy. And >> I am highly sensitive to that. I'm highly sensitive to that that we're reducing it. Um, but I've kind of made peace of it in two ways really. The first way is I always see myself as as the gateway drug.

[00:06:54]>> Mhm.

[00:06:55]>> To to which one? To philosophy or Nik Mckience. Yeah.

[00:07:00]>> I I think what we're doing now hopefully people go away and they'll Google or they'll probably use Gemini or Chat DBT to you know whatever. So I like to think that they will go away and do a bit of further research. Sure. And the second thing is I I mentioned that you know we have these lost books of Aristotles and of all of the Greek philosophers that I like to think that what they were actually doing in the school most of the day was this kind of stuff.

[00:07:22]>> Yeah. wanking during heroine and also talking about philosophy in an accessible normal human way that the books that we get handed down to us from antiquity are their condensed and you know highly philosophical stuff that they would have been doing that all of the time they would have just been chatting and you know shooting the breeze the philosophical breeze >> and so I think we are the equivalent of the ancient Greek schools of philosophy >> I'm obviously the garden I don't know where you'd feel most at home the stoer >> the academy you always been a bit of a mass Maybe more the the the academy.

[00:07:54]Yeah, I think so. You say a math said, >> "Yeah, they had to study math for 10 years now."

[00:07:58]>> Yeah. No, I can't. I I used to be into like analytic philosophy, but I I could never really do maths. I think I've got that. What's dyslexia for numbers? Like I'm really Yeah, I'm like extremely bad at like addition and so like mental math would have wrestled you out the academy.

[00:08:12]Yeah. Would have literally wrestled wrestled.

[00:08:14]>> But you know where you would have found a home?

[00:08:16]>> The garden.

[00:08:17]>> In the garden with with everybody else.

[00:08:19]Everybody, the slaves, the foreigners, the women, whoever, even Alexis, >> even even me, >> Alexis welcome in the garden. We would share some bread and some cheese. In fact, Epicurus got this quotation we wrote to a friend saying, "Please send me a wheel of cheese so I may feast every day." So, when they talk about the Epicuran feasts, you know, the Stoics and the Christians imagined it as being some kind of like gluttonous binge, eyes wide shut kind of orgy, but actually it's just them slicing off a cheese and some bread and giving it to some friends.

[00:08:45]>> I don't know. I'm like um what did Grouch show Mark say? I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member. I sort of feel that way about this maybe. Although I'd like I'd love to I'd love to try it out, but I would if I were there.

[00:08:57]>> I think I would want to speak to the man in charge and I'd want to ask him a few questions. I don't want to ask him about the experience machine. I'd want to ask him about AI consciousness, but I'd also want to ask him about something else which actually ties into this whole self-help type stuff, right? Like those books. And no offense to those authors, by the way. Like I hope they're all selling well and all.

[00:09:14]>> Join the the the library of >> great, you know, do do your thing. But there's there's a level to which there's this kind of optimism where every book has to be about like how to fix your life. There can't be any just like read this interesting thing or here's a thing that will just be maybe marginally useful like you know here are like 20 tips to like >> moderately adapting certain specific areas of your life. You know that kind of stuff. But there's so much of this optimism. How to change your life? How to do this? And so much of it is about agency. It's like here's how like by changing the way you think you can find happiness. Here's how you can make more money. Here's how you can invest properly. Here's how to, you know, use the gym to fix your mental health and stuff.

[00:09:55]>> And Epicurionism is very in line with this in the sense that it believes that you are essentially in control.

[00:10:01]>> Absolutely.

[00:10:01]>> Of your happiness and your sadness. Now, >> I think that's a bit easy to say.

[00:10:06]>> Mhm.

[00:10:07]>> Right. And another important critique of the Epicurion is that they downplay the extent to which you are not in control of the factors that make you happy or sad. Whereas the Stoics will say, >> "Yeah, I'm not in control of that, but I just say that whatever happens, I just do the virtuous thing of remaining steadfast."

[00:10:26]>> Whereas the Epicurans are searching for pleasure.

[00:10:29]>> Some people just don't get it.

[00:10:31]>> And yet Epicurus is pretty insistent that you can >> Well, actually, this is this is where I think Sticism and Epicurunism are actually more aligned. Yeah, I I mentioned earlier that you know, apart from a few philosophical differences, I think if you put an Epicuran next to a stoic next to a Benedictian monk, they would look and behave well probably not look, but they would behave pretty similar. I I imagine and in this regard exactly the same. I mean, Epicurus has these quotations where he says, you know, have prepare for the future essentially. you know that but if you do the hard work now preparing then whatever the future brings you will be better off which is and the stoics occasionally lift a lot of stuff from Epicurus and rebadged it as their own.

[00:11:08]>> Yeah.

[00:11:08]>> But and it's and it's there's ancient Greek virtue called utarchy which is self-sufficiency.

[00:11:14]>> Mhm.

[00:11:14]>> And it looks a bit differently across stoicism and epicunism. Stoicism talks about indifference that we need to be indifferent to these things because when catastrophe inevitably comes along my family will die. I'll lose my job. I'll get a leg cut off in an industrial accident. I'm ready for it. I'm I'm indifferent to these things. And Epicurunism would approve of that in the sense that, you know, they see virtue as a as a kind of insurance policy that things like resilience and autoarchy um and wisdom are necessary so that when life throws a wobbly at you or throws a spanner in the works for the American audience, I think wobbly is a go a cricket >> um analogy maybe.

[00:11:53]>> I wouldn't I wouldn't know.

[00:11:54]>> Don't play cricket. No, don't even watch it.

[00:11:56]>> Neither do I, but I know about that.

[00:11:58]Okay. Anyway, they throw a ball at you, which is bad. You're ready for it. And whereas the Epicurans would say, "What we should do is consciously get our insurance policies in line now." And this is where friendship is really important, right? That yes, they are very well aware. Epicurus himself was racked with terrible pain over the course of his life. We talked about you bending over with stomach pains earlier.

[00:12:20]He had some kind of digestive issue. We think it might have been Crohn's. I think commentators have pointed out that it might be in your medical opinion.

[00:12:28]>> In my medical opinion and he died from kidney stones which are generally recognized to be one of the most painful things. In fact, he has a letter at the end where he talked to his friends saying I haven't been able to pee for like 3 days. I'm dying friends. And he says in that letter, >> he says the only thing which has given me pleasure right now is remembering our conversations that we once had.

[00:12:45]>> Yeah. So you know he knew pain and all and I said in the post Alexander the great world it was a time of strife and danger and and famine and starvation and so there was a lot of pain and so the best way we can prevent or at least prepare for that is to have good friends at our Right.