Cicero about pleasure

The article analyzes Cicero’s attitude to pleasure (‘voluptas’) as an ethic-philosophic category. Cicero differentiates between mental and physical pleasures. He argues with Epicureans that physical pleasure is the highest good; he considers it a vice alongside with avarice, a lust for wealth and luxury. Cicero is convinced that people should resist physical pleasures. Sapience helps them in this resistance. Mental pleasures are above physical ones. Cicero thinks that mental pleasures are the highest good because they are connected with moral beauty, virtues, dignity, authority and unselfish friendship.