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Letter To Menoeceus Analysis

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The Letter to Menoeceus by Epicurus was designed to serve as a guideline for the particular types of pleasures that people should strive for in order to achieve a happy and prosperous life. In the letter, Epicurus first puts forth the notion that there are particular aspects of life that should be disregarded as holding such a high level of important as they do such things as death and living in accordance with what is right in the eyes of the Gods. Ultimately, the focal point of the letter was Epicurus 's idea regarding pleasure and being able to maximize one 's pleasure was only the true and proper way to live.
Especially, now as the phrase "a good life" is thrown around in such as cavalier fashion it seems that perhaps people are being led astray in their quest for happy and meaningful life. Presently, it appears that many people associate the …show more content…

Additionally, in the video Epicurus on Happiness narrated by Alain De Botton he explained why Epicurus believed that material things in life seemed to provide people with an extreme amount of pleasure. De Botton illustrated how people come to believe that happiness is tied to shopping because most people do not really understand what they need in life. He explained that Epicurus believed ultimately people become lost and find that buying useless objects we don 't really need fills that void (Epicurus on Happiness, 2012).
Furthermore, Epicurus blamed advertising as contributing to people 's incessant need to purchase material goods. It was due to the fact that the advertising companies target the things we do really need in life like friendship and embed within carefully selected advertisements in order to trick our minds and make us believe we need things we really don 't need at all Epicurus on Happiness, 2012). The ads that pop on our televisions or computers consistently focus on making us feel bad about ourselves in some way while providing us also with the solution, which of course only involves purchasing their

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