Pleasure and the limits of desire › Which desires deserve our effort?

Epicurus distinguishes natural desires from groundless ones. Among natural desires, some are necessary and some are unnecessary. He further distinguishes necessities for life, bodily comfort, and happiness. This gives us three broad categories for thinking about desire. Letter, 127–128; Principal Doctrines, 29.

• Natural and necessary desires concern needs whose frustration brings a real lack, such as hunger or thirst.
• Natural but unnecessary desires can vary an enjoyment without being required to remove the underlying need. An elaborate meal illustrates the distinction from nourishment itself.
• Groundless desires depend on empty beliefs about what we must possess or become. The pursuit of limitless wealth or admiration illustrates how a supposed need can lack a point of completion.

These categories ask us to investigate a desire's basis. An expensive object might be useful, enjoyable, or a means of competing for status. Its price does not tell us which desire is operating. Nor does the classification imply that every unnecessary enjoyment should be eliminated. We still need to judge its consequences. An optional pleasure that is easy to obtain and leaves no troublesome dependency can fit an Epicurean life.

Return to the promotion. If the additional income would secure adequate housing, the decision involves a substantial need. If your needs are already met and the attraction is that colleagues would finally see you as successful, the desire has a different structure. Recognition might never feel sufficient, since another person could always outrank you. These are hypothetical possibilities rather than a verdict on every demanding job. The point is to ask what the desired object is supposed to resolve.

There is also a limit to the advice. A person who lacks food or secure shelter has a material problem. Calling needs simple does not make the means of satisfying them available. Epicurus's praise of sufficiency should not become a reason to tell someone in deprivation that their circumstances do not matter. His own distinction between necessary and unnecessary desires gives us a reason to take actual need seriously.