Hedonism

Hedonism Through out a person’s life, they will make billions of decision that affect them. But why do they make the decisions they do' I believe every decision made is in the pursuit of pleasure, or the avoidance of pain. In other words, the ultimate goal of life is to obtain pleasure or happiness and avoid pain and suffering. Humans spend their entire lives following this philosophy whether they realize it or not. This philosophy is called Hedonism and philosophers have split it into two branches; one being ethical hedonism and the other psychological hedonism. Ethical Hedonism is the view that our fundamental moral obligation is to maximize pleasure or happiness. It is most associated with the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (342-270 BCE.) who taught that our life's goal should be to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. In Epicurus’ A Letter to Menoeceus, one of his only surviving fragments, Epicurus gives advice on how to decrease life’s pains and describes the nature of human pleasure. “We recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which pleasure, hedonism, every, happiness, pain, music, life, highest, goal, should, sex, pursuit, psychological, men, freud, epicurus, work, things, theory, possible, nature, making, make, lives, id, human, good, enjoy, decision, classical, choices, believes, believe, based, aristotle