Origin Early and middle Stoa, roughly the third to first centuries BCE; the classification survives mainly through later doxographical reports rather than the school's own lost founding texts.
Hedone, pleasure or an irrational elation at a present apparent good, is one of the four principal pathe of Stoic ethics. Stoic sources distinguish it sharply from the settled joy that the sage feels at genuine goods, virtue and right action, treating ordinary pleasure as an excessive, unreasoned response to something merely believed good, a passion to be corrected rather than indulged.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodEarly and middle Stoa, roughly the third to first centuries BCE; the classification survives mainly through later doxographical reports rather than the school's own lost founding texts. 1 Place of OriginAthens, where Zeno of Citium founded the Stoic school around 300 BCE, and later the wider Hellenistic and Roman world. 1 Origin of the NameAncient Greek hedone, pleasure, the root of English hedonism. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerSystematized within Stoic ethics chiefly by Chrysippus of Soli, the school's third head, whose own treatise on the passions survives only in fragments and later paraphrase; the fourfold scheme is best known today through Diogenes Laertius's later summary. 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionStandard teaching, not formally defined 1 Doctrinal Status DetailStoic sources distinguish it sharply from the settled joy (chara) the sage feels at genuine goods, virtue and right action, treating ordinary pleasure as an excessive, unreasoned response to something merely believed good, a passion to be corrected rather than indulged. 1 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourcePleasure, or an irrational elation at a present apparent good; one of the four principal pathe of Stoic ethics. 1 Hedone (Pleasure)
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Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Opposed By
Sophrosyne is the correct disposition toward present goods that hedone, pleasure, distorts into an irrational, excessive elation.
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Originates in Language
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Held Differently
Gluttony (Gula), Vices Stoic hedone names any excessive, unreasoned elation at a believed good in general; the Christian capital sin of gluttony narrows that same diagnosis of pleasure to food and drink specifically.
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Sources
1. Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics
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