explained above is selfishness. A person who views their life solely on happiness, pain, pleasure, and tranquillity is one who does not care about another person’s happiness and pain. If a friend grows sick, an Epicurean would just scratch that person out of their life like the drop of a coin because to help them would require the risk of pain and waste of time. The only reason an Epicurean would have any friends would be to utilize them and use them for their opinions. However, friendship for the sake of advantage is not true friendship in the proper sense of the word. Since virtue is the highest pleasure that could be obtained, he who practices virtue for the sake of pleasure alone is selfish, not virtuous. Because he lacks virtue, he will never enjoy pleasure. Desire Management, a way to correctly avoid pain, was a very large part of Epicurean beliefs. Epicurus felt that the elimination of all worries could take place if we only satisfy our natural and necessary desires. There are three different combinations of desires that Epicurus discusses: Natural and Necessary, Natural and Unnecessary, and Unnatural. First, natural and necessary desires are desires in which the beliefs behind the desires are both true. For example, if a person felt the urge to use the bathroom, they know if they don’t go it will cause pain, therefore it is necessary to relieve himself or herself. Second, natural and unnecessary desires limit a person to a minimum. It is natural to feel the desire for food, but unnecessary to gorge or treat ones self to a steak dinner; bread and water will prevent the hunger pains, so that is what we should have. Thirdly, unnecessary desires are vain and will not cause pain if absent. According to Epicurus, it is unnecessary to desire sex. I strongly disagree with this point because it is natural to have the urge for sexual interactions and necessary to fulfill them or else reproduction would not ...
