Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Epicurus, positing that godlike happiness consists in not hungering, not thirsting, and not shivering with cold, uttered an impious statement, saying that on these points he would fight even with father Zeus — laying down as the blessed victory the doctrine of dung-eating swine rather than of rational and philosophical men. For among those who begin from pleasure are reckoned the Cyrenaics and Epicurus; for these say expressly that the end is to live pleasantly, and that the only complete good is pleasure. Epicurus further says that even the removal of pain is pleasure; and he says that what is choiceworthy is whatever from itself first draws one toward itself, being of course altogether something in motion. Dinomachus and Calliphon said that the end is to do everything on one's own account for the sake of attaining and obtaining pleasure; and Hieronymus the Peripatetic held that the end is to live untroubled, and that the only final good is happiness. Diodorus likewise, coming from the same school, declares the end to be to live untroubled and nobly.
Epicurus, then, along with the Cyrenaics, holds pleasure to be our first proper possession; for they claim that virtue, entering for pleasure's sake, brought pleasure about. But according to the followers of Calliphon, virtue came in for the sake of pleasure, but afterward, having beheld the beauty that belongs to it, made itself equal in honor to that first principle, that is, to pleasure.
The followers of Aristotle hold that the end is to live in accordance with virtue, yet holding that not everyone who possesses virtue thereby has happiness or the end; for the wise man who is tormented and falls into unwished-for misfortunes, and on this account gladly wishes to escape from life, is neither blessed nor happy. For virtue needs also a certain span of time; it is not accomplished in a single day, and it is constituted only in a complete span — since, as they say, there is no such thing as a happy child; and the complete span of time would be a human life. Happiness, then, is completed out of the three kinds of goods. Therefore, according to them, neither the poor man, nor the man without repute, nor even the sick man, nor even one who is a household slave, can be happy.
Again, Zeno the Stoic maintained that virtue itself, lived out, constitutes the end; Cleanthes, that agreement with nature, lived in, is the end; Diogenes held that the end lies in reasoning well, which he took to consist in the selection of things according to nature. Antipater, his disciple, supposes that the end lies in continually and unfailingly selecting the things according to nature and rejecting the things contrary to nature. Archedemus in turn explained the end to be this: to live selecting the greatest and most sovereign things according to nature, being unable to go beyond them. In addition to these, Panaetius declared that the end is found in living out the impulses nature has given us; and above all, Posidonius held it to be to live contemplating the truth and order of the universe and, so far as possible, helping to establish oneself in accordance with it, in no way led by the irrational part of the soul. Some of the more recent Stoics rendered it thus, that the end is to live in accordance with the constitution of man. Why should I catalogue Aristo for you? He said the end was indifference, and he leaves what is indifferent simply indifferent. Or should I bring forward the views of Herillus? Herillus lays down that the end is to live according to knowledge. Some think it proper to attribute to the younger members of the Academy the end of secure suspension of judgment regarding appearances. And indeed Lyco the Peripatetic said that the true joy of the soul was the end, as †Leucimus† said it was joy over noble things. Critolaus, likewise a Peripatetic, spoke of perfection according to a life that flows well in accordance with nature, meaning by this the threefold perfection completed out of the three kinds of goods.
We must not stop, content with these, but must be as zealous as possible also to set forth what is taught by the natural philosophers on the subject before us. They say that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae declared that the end of life is contemplation, and the freedom arising from it; and that Heraclitus of Ephesus declared it to be well-pleasedness. Heraclides of Pontus relates that Pythagoras handed down that the happiness of the soul is the knowledge of the perfection of numbers. But the Abderites too teach what the end is: Democritus, in his work On the End, calls it cheerfulness, which he also named well-being (and he often adds: for delight and non-delight are the boundary-markers †of those who have reached their prime†); Hecataeus calls it self-sufficiency; and indeed Apollodotus of Cyzicus calls it the leading of the soul, just as Nausiphanes calls it fearlessness — for he said this was called by Democritus untroubledness. Further, in addition to these, Diotimus declared the end to be the complete fullness of goods, which is called well-being. Again, Antisthenes named it freedom from vanity, while those called the Annicereans, of the Cyrenaic succession, set no fixed end for life as a whole, but held that each action has its own proper end, namely the pleasure arising from that action. These Cyrenaics reject Epicurus's account of pleasure — namely, that pain's absence counts as pleasure — dismissing it as the state of a corpse; for we rejoice, they say, not only in pleasures, but also in social intercourse and in the pursuit of honor. Epicurus, however, thinks that every joy of the soul arises from the flesh being first affected.
And Metrodorus, in his work On the fact that the cause within us contributes more to happiness than that arising from external things, says that the good of the soul is nothing other than the stable condition of the flesh and the confident hope concerning it.
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