When Less is More.

minimum level. Sometimes more really is more, and less really is less. But often, less is more. If all this piece does is open up the question of whether less is more —if all it does is remind the reader that this is a question, and that our answers to it have important repercussions— then it will have served its purpose. Many ethicists in the ancient tradition argued that human lives could be improved through decreasing our economic activity: consuming less food, avoiding ostentatious building or entertaining, thinking less about money. For Aristotle, Seneca and Epicurus the good life was equally a life devoted to right thinking and a life not devoted to wealth-getting or sybaritism. These two aspects supported each other. They were held to be key to eudaimonia, that complex term variously translated as ‘happiness,’ ‘excellence,’ or ‘human flourishing.’ A key issue in ancient ethics was whether the pursuit of the good life entailed limiting and harshly disciplining our natural desires and acquisitiveness, or providing for their moderate fulfillment. This question in turn was related to the role that pleasure and physical satisfaction were thought to play in a good life: whether defining of it, irrelevant to it, or a more or less important part of it. A wide variety of positions were staked out on these issues which I will not attempt to summarize here. The key point is that almost all of the ancient writers argued for limiting material acquisition and our attempts to satisfy our physical desires. This was true for those who thought pleasure the greatest human good and for those who declared physical pleasure irrelevant to questions of how humans should live their GLOBAL BIOETHICS Vol. 14 N. 1 2001