Neoepicureism and Charles Saint-Evermond’s conception of pleasure

Abstract

We will analyze in this article how Charles de Saint-Évremond (1613-1703), without renouncing religiosity, proposes an ethic that does not deny the earthly world, as the Church advocated in France at the end of the 17th century. The philosopher not only rehabilitates worldly pleasures, but also restores as an anthropological trait of man the character of zoon politikon that Aristotle already underlined and would influence Epicurus. He also takes of the Estagirita his formula from the middle ground in a daily ethic: not to fall into asceticism, but neither to surrender excessively to worldly pleasures, not to move too much but not to remain still. The human being may be selfish, but the contest with others, in a reasoned and well-calculated way, in addition to economic and social engine, places us in the world and reunites us with God. We understand that he is a fundamental philosopher, like other «minors» at the end of the 17th century to explain the take off of the Age of Enlightenment.