I think Huxley and Epicurus were friends...

The philosopher Epicurus stressed the importance of pleasure in nearly all of his philosophical ideas. For example, Epicurus thought, “serenity will help us endure all pain” (Gardner 122). After rereading this quote from my notes that I took on Sophie’s World, I instantly thought of a novel from AP Lit called Brave New World.

Don’t worry juniors; you’ll get the opportunity to read this book full of “forming relationships” and drugs next year. This book is your classic utopian society where all religions are prohibited by what is called the World State Government. In fact, the civilians of the society did not even know about God or religions from the past. One of the leaders, Mustafa Mond thought that religion was not compatible with scientific technology and overall happiness. In my opinion, the utopia presented in BNW sounds like Epicurus’s ideal society from his philosophies taught in Sophie’s World. The enjoyment of life was Epicurus’s primary goal in his philosophies and thought that there was a “pleasure calculation” that could weigh the pleasure with the consequences. In BNW, the people of the utopia did not question the government or dare try to rebel. Rather, when they would have conflicting feelings, they would take soma (a drug) or go to a big orgy instead. Yes juniors, an orgy! The people in the utopia did not have to face consequences, because they would just get high or “form relationships” when they felt something wasn’t going right. Epicurus would probably ask the author, Huxley, why he decided to use sex as a way to reach pleasure because Epicurus thought that pleasure did not necessarily have to come from sexual satisfaction. Also, Epicurus did not think afterlife or religion was important either. He tended to lean with Democritus’ idea about eternal particles. Since Huxley referred to the drugs as “Christianity without tears” , Epicurus might question what happens to the utopian people after life. Lastly, “epicuriean” is used in the present day to describe someone who lives only for pleasure. Epicurus may ask Huxley whether or not the people were solely living a life of self-indulgence or if the drugs/sex were just used to sway them away from uncovering what was really going on around them. However, Epicurus didn’t find the people’s intereation with politics all that important, which just makes me want to argue more about how Epicurus was philosophizing a world that is much like that of the utopia in Brave New World.

Gaarder, Jostein. Sophie's World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. Print