In this session of Self-Presence Podcast, Alexander talks about Hedonistic and Stoic views on happiness and also discusses the shortcoming of these schools.

Although Stoicism and Hedonism were the rival schools, they had a lot in common.
Hedonists talked about pleasure as the goal of human life. But to achieve the best satisfaction possible, they had to live a life of a moderate ascetic and deny the most of sensual pleasures. Only then a hedonist reached the desired state of ataraxia.
Stoics disregarded pleasure and sought to act freely from the external. Their desired state of apathy had to come straight away from denying any connections of the mind with nature. However, they never achieved it and always were busy with external things. 

A better approach to happiness was bound to appear, which happened later in other streams of philosophy. 

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