Stoicism vs Hedonism

Intro

Today, I’m going to be talking about two very important but forgotten philosophies: Stoicism and Hedonism. These philosophies are two sides of the same coin, two ends of the same spectrum, and I believe it is important to understand what these philosophies are. I’ve briefly touched on Stoicism in a previous article (The Logos and Marcus Aurelius), but I wanted to revisit parts of this philosophy to further explain the concept.

What is Hedonism

Hedonism is the philosophy that life’s main focus should be enjoyment and pleasure. Hedonism can sometimes be entangled with Epicureanism; both argue that pleasure is the ultimate good in life. The main difference that I’ve found is that Epicureanism is focused more on the pleasures of the mind (deep thought, great conversation, peaceful life), whereas Hedonism is focused on physical pleasures (sex, porn, video games, junk food, drugs).

Although some of this might sound great and somewhat familiar, having pleasure and enjoyment be the focal point of your life can bring many problems.

Hedonism can bring you short term, instant pleasure, but over the long term will only bring you unfulfillment and despair. When you’re indulging in short term pleasures, you are sacrificing your future self for your current self. Everyone understands this intrinsically, but it is easy to fall into these traps without realizing it. A section of an article from enstoic describes the flaw in this thinking very well in the quote below:

“The consequence of this pleasure-seeking mentality is the futility of it all. The problem with living life based on the pursuit of pleasure is that you’ll never have enough. The more pleasure you find, the more you want. This attachment to pleasure creates an infinite loop of sorts, ultimately leading to an often miserable existence.” – enstoic

What is Stoicism

Stoicism is one of the best weapons to fight against hedonism. Stoicism focuses more on being the best and strongest version of yourself versus indulging in life’s pleasures whenever you can. Emotional states should not be sought out but understood and appreciated when they come and go. What should be sought out is doing the most you can with the limited amount of time and resources you have in this life.  

Practice strength and courage, focus on production rather than consumption, and act as you should despite how you are feeling.  

I believe that life’s meaning is not enjoying it as much as possible, as the Hedonistic philosophy would argue. This will only leave you unfulfilled and paradoxically unhappy with life. I believe that life’s meaning is directly proportional to how much responsibility you bear and how much you contribute to the world around you. Although responsibility is not always fun and enjoyable, I promise that this type of living will provide the most fulfillment you can get from life. Alternatively, living a hedonistic lifestyle will bring you no fulfillment but will only bring you short term, shallow pleasure.

Stoics of the Past

The stoic’s understood these ideas very well, and some of the greatest leaders of our time practiced stoicism. To name a few we have George Washington, Marcus Aurelius, Theodore Roosevelt, Pete Carroll, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. All of these people experienced tremendous success in their lives, and its no coincidence that they were all fans of the stoic philosophy.

Conclusion

“A nation is born a stoic and dies epicurean.” – Will Durant

Successful empires have always begun as Stoics. It’s no coincidence that our first president was a Stoic. Warrior cultures use religion and faith to move through hardships and become successful in conquest. The American culture began as stoics, where we used faith and strength to build the empire that we enjoy today. Despite hardships, we continued to push forward towards our goals. Now that we have all of this wealth and power, it is very easy for us to avoid responsibility and difficultly as a culture and to devolve into hedonistic behavior. I believe it is important to understand these two philosophies and we can all use a reminder to practice strength, courage, truth, and all other virtues of Stoicism whenever we can.

Afternote

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