Of all the philosophers who reject the value of pleasure, the most radical is Plato. The claim that pleasure is a value, even the criterion for moral worth, lies at the core of hedonism and its tradition.

Only the Epicureans, after the Cyrenaics, accept it fully as the condition of a good life. Now, for Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, hedone is both the first and the worst candidate. Yet, at the point where the disagreement begins, we find a remarkable consensus about what usually comes to mind as the most obvious candidate. What is happiness? And here, with the variety of meanings of eudaimonia, the discrepancy among philosophical traditions unfolds. 428 –348 or 347 b.c.e.) and Aristotle (384 –322 b.c.e.), to Epicureanism and Stoicism, but then the competition about the proper definition of 'happiness' begins.

This starting point is common to Plato (c. Its history can be traced back to Hellenistic philosophy.Īncient ethics can be defined as a response to the question: 'What is a good life?' The first reply to such a question is 'happiness' ( eudaimonia ). Hedonism is a modern word derived from the Greek hedone, or 'pleasure.' As a philosophical position, moral hedonism justifies pleasure as a good, or even the good.