Janis Joplin was found dead in her hotel room in Hollywood, California on October 4th, 1970 due to a heroin overdose. She is regarded as the greatest white female blues singer, and also remembered as a hedonist, hard-drinker, bra-derisive, bisexual, and challenger of social conventions (Janis Joplin, 1998). Aristotle, an ancient philosopher, was also considered a hedonist; since he believed that the only thing that is essentially important is one's own pleasure (OÃÂKeefe, 2006). In this essay we are going to prove that even though Janis Joplin and Epicurus were both considered hedonists, they fall under different categories of the same.
On one hand we have Epicurus, a man who dedicated his life to the study of philosophy by developing his psychological and ethical theory of happiness and his view on the atomic theory, among other things. He taught that death is the end of the body and the soul and consequently should not be feared; that the gods do not reward or punish humans; that the universe is infinite and eternal; and that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.
Epicurus encourages to solid pleasures intead of f...
Piece of My Heart
In Concert (Janis Joplin album)This has to do with what he considered the two greatest human fears: fear of punishment and fear of what would happen after death when one was faced with the wrath of the gods. He believed that one can only rid oneÃÂs self from these fears by understanding the true nature of things (Denise, White, and Peterfreund, 2008, p. 41).
He taught that the pleasure principle had to do not with the intensity of the pleasure, but with the duration and consequences of the same; that the ultimate human goal was happiness, which could only be achieved by educated choices based on the long term...