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The Art of Living

The Goal of Life is Happiness

Massimo Pigliucci surveys the views of ancient schools.

As we all know, the telos of life is eudaimonia. Or to use English, the goal of life is happiness. This immediately leads to two crucial questions: How do we achieve happiness? And what is happiness, anyway?

Together with my friends Greg Lopez and Meredith Kunz, I have tried to navigate all the answers to these questions that were articulated by the ancient Greco-Romans, in Live Like a Philosopher—What the Ancient Greeks and Romans Can Teach Us About Living a Happy Life (2025). The result is a conceptual map featuring three main ‘ports’, which we’ll now briefly visit: the port of pleasure, the port of character, and the port of doubt.

Our first stop is the port of pleasure – home of the hedonistic philosophies of the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans. The Cyrenaics, a sect established by Aristippus of Cyrene, a follower of Socrates, believed that there is no overarching goal of life. Rather, we should simply pursue whatever pleasure is available in the here and now. This is similar to the intuitive hedonism adopted pre-reflectively by many people nowadays, though the Cyrenaics were careful in managing the situation so that they would own their pleasures, not the other way around.

The followers of Epicurus of Samos were a bit more sophisticated in their hedonism. They thought that the goal of life is ataraxia, or tranquility of mind, and that it can be achieved by a studious avoidance of pain – physical, and, especially, mental. The result was not the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle that ignorant critics have always associated with Epicureanism, but rather, a tranquil pursuit of everyday pleasures, such as friendship, conversations, and simple meals, coupled with avoiding political involvement, which, as we know, is not conducive to tranquility!

The second port, of character, is a bit more crowded, since it features (in order of appearance) Platonism, Aristotelianism, Cynicism, and Stoicism. While there are a number of important distinctions among these philosophies, what they have in common is the notion that the goal is a life worth living, and the idea that this can only be accomplished by the pursuit of virtue. These days ‘virtue’ is a bit of an outmoded word, often reminding people of old-fashioned values. But the Ancient Greek term was arete, which better translates as ‘excellence’. So to be virtuous simply means to be very good at one’s proper function. For instance, an arete lioness is one who is excellent at capturing gazelles, and an arete bread knife is one that does a great job at slicing bread.

What then is the ‘proper function’ of a human being? For the Stoics, it was to live cooperatively with other human beings (because we are social animals), and to solve our problems by way of reason.

Moving on to the third port – of doubt – we find Socrates, some of the Sophists, such as Protagoras, and members of two schools of skepticism, the Pyrrhonists and the Academic Skeptics. The basic idea is that, in an important sense, doubt will set you free by handing you the keys to a life worth living.

Socrates was the archetypal skeptic: he knew that he didn’t know much, and gradually discovered that others knew even less. This is why he was the wisest man in all of Greece, according to the Oracle at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Protagoras famously said that ‘man is the measure of all things’, by which he may have meant that there is no objective truth, as what is true depends on our interests and judgments. The Pyrrhonists, a group of skeptics founded by Pyrrho of Elis, agreed with the Epicureans that the goal of life is ataraxia, but thought that the way to get there is practicing epoche, or suspension of judgment. We are all far too attached to opinions that can be reasonably debated. If only we realized how much we really don’t know, the resulting abstentions would free us from worries, allowing us to live serenely. Finally, we have the Academic Skeptics: people like Carneades of Cyrene (same birthplace as Aristippus) and the Roman, Marcus Tullius Cicero. They’re referred to as ‘academic’ because they belonged to a skeptical phase of Plato’s Academy. Their idea was that absolute knowledge is probably impossible for human beings, since both our senses and our reason are fallible. However, there is no need to be as radical as the Pyrrhonists and abstain from all judgments. Rather, we can proportion our beliefs to the available evidence, updating the beliefs as new evidence comes in (this is essentially the way in which modern science works). This will allow us to live a life of virtue based on reason, not dissimilar from the one advocated by the philosophies we found in the port of character, but with a sprinkle of doubt undermining our dogmatism.

The ancient Greco-Romans left us a rich philosophical legacy, mapping out different routes to the good life that still resonate today. From the careful pleasure-seeking of the Epicureans, to the virtue-focused Stoics, and from Socrates’s humble wisdom, to the pragmatic skepticism of the Academic school, these thinkers were wrestling with questions that remain vital: How do we find contentment? What makes a life worth living? Their answers weren’t mere abstract theories, but practical philosophies meant to guide real people through real challenges. Whether we ultimately dock at the port of pleasure, character, or doubt – or perhaps sail between them as circumstances demand – these ancient insights continue to offer us valuable navigation tools for our own journeys toward happiness and meaning.

Massimo Pigliucci is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His books include How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (Basic Books). Please visit massimopigliucci.org.