The Cyrenaic school of philosophy (named after its founder Aristippus’ native city of Cyrene in North Africa) flourished in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Ugo Zilioli’s book provides the first book-length introduction to the school in English. The book begins by introducing the main figures of the Cyrenaic school beginning with Aristippus and by setting them into their historical context. Once the reader is familiar with those figures and with the genealogy of the school, the book offers an overview (...) of ancient and modern interpretations of the Cyrenaics, to provide readers with alternative accounts of the doctrines they endorsed and of the role they played in the context of ancient thought. Finally, the book offers a reconstruction of Cyrenaic philosophy and shows how the ethical side of their speculation connected with the epistemology and ontology they endorsed and that, as a result, the Cyrenaics were able to offer a quite sophisticated philosophy. Indeed, Zilioli demonstrates that they represented, in ancient philosophy, an important and original metaphysical position and alternative to the kind of realism endorsed by Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

Brief overview of the ethics of the Cyrenaics.

The Cyrenaics assert that (1) particular pleasure is the highest good, and happiness is valued not for its own sake, but only for the sake of the particular pleasures that compose it; (2) we should not forego present pleasures for the sake of obtaining greater pleasure in the future. Their anti-eudaimonism and lack of future-concern do not follow from their hedonism. So why do they assert (1) and (2)? After reviewing and criticizing the proposals put forward by Annas, Irwin (...) and Tsouna, I offer two possible reconstructions. In the first reconstruction, I explain claim (1) as follows: happiness has no value above and beyond the value of the particular pleasures that compose it. Also, there is no "structure" to happiness. The Cyrenaics are targeting the thesis that happiness involves having the activities of one's life forming an organized whole, the value of which cannot be reduced to the value of the experiences within that life. I explain claim (2) as follows: a maximally pleasant life is valuable, but the best way to achieve it is to concentrate heedlessly on the present. In the second reconstruction, the good is radically relativized to one's present preferences. The Cyrenaics assert that we desire some particular pleasure, e.g., the pleasure that results from having this drink now. Thus, our telos -- which is based upon our desires -- is this particular pleasure, not (generic) 'pleasure' or the maximization of pleasure over our lifetime. As our desires change, so does our telos. I conclude that the scanty texts we have do not allow us to decide conclusively between these reconstructions, but I give some reasons to support the second over the first. (shrink)

In Book 3 of the Tusculans, Cicero reports that the Cyrenaics practised the premeditation of future evils. This article focuses on the philosophical consistency of this exercise with other Cyrenaic testimonies. It argues for the authenticity of Cicero’s report and provides a critical survey of previous attempts to reconstruct the theory underlying Cyrenaic premeditation, which addresses crucial questions about the management of future pleasures and pains, and the duration of affections. New evidence from Diogenes Laertius 2.94 is then used (...) to support an alternative interpretation of the Cyrenaic praemeditatio malorum. (shrink)

A common reading of the Cyrenaics is that they are a school of extreme hedonist presentists, recognising only the pleasure of the present moment, and advising against turning our attention to past or future pleasure or pain. Yet they have some strange advice which tells followers to anticipate future harms in order to lessen the unexpectedness of them when they occur. It’s a puzzle, then, how they can consistently hold the attitude they do to our concern with our present (...) selves, and yet endorse the practise of dwelling on possible future painful scenarios. To establish that this is a puzzle, though, we must first be convinced that the report is true. Cicero is our only clear source for the Cyrenaic advice, and scholars have noted reasons to be suspicious of the reliability of his report. I discuss these doubts, and why they ultimately fail to undermine Cicero’s testimony as a source. Defending Cicero as a source for Cyrenaic thought removes a barrier to taking seriously an aspect of Cyrenaic psychology which could radically alter our understanding of their views. (shrink)

In Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus takes pains to differentiate the skeptical way of life from other positions with which it is often confused, and in the course of this discussion he briefly explains how skepticism differs from Cyrenaicism. Surprisingly, Sextus does not mention an important apparent difference between the two. The Cyrenaics have a positive epistemic commitment--that we can apprehend our own affections. Although we cannot know whether the honey is really sweet, we can know infallibly that right (...) now we are being sweetened. By contrast, Sextus says explicitly that, as skeptics, Pyrrhonists apprehend nothing whatsoever. A case can (and has) been made that Sextus does not mention this difference because, on this matter, there really isn't an important difference between the two: the skeptic is perfectly able to report how things appear to him, e.g., that the honey seems sweet, and it is crucial for the skeptic that he not abolish the appearances. But, I argue, what the skeptics are doing when they report how things appear to them is importantly different from the sort of immediate, infallible apprehension of one's own affections claimed by the Cyrenaics, as the latter involves theoretical commitments regarding the nature of one's affections that the skeptic eschews. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a reconstruction of the account of meaning and language the Cyrenaics appear to have defended on the basis of a famous passage of Sextus, as well as showing the philosophical parentage of that account.

The Cyrenaic school was a fourth-century BC philosophical movement, related both to the Socratic tradition and to Greek Scepticism. In ethics, Cyrenaic hedonism can be seen as one of many attempts made by the associates of Socrates and their followers to endorse his ethical outlook and to explore the implications of his method. In epistemology, there are close philosophical links between the Cyrenaics and the Sceptics, both Pyrrhonists and Academics. There are further links with modern philosophy as well, for (...) the Cyrenaics introduced a form of subjectivism which in some ways preannounces Cartesian views, endorsed by Malebranche and Hume and developed by Kant. This 1998 book reconstructs Cyrenaic epistemology, explains how it depends on Cyrenaic hedonism, locates it in the context of ancient debates, and discusses its connections with modern and contemporary epistemological positions. (shrink)

Eudaimonia, happiness, is a property of a whole life, not of some portion of it. What can this mean for hedonists? For Epicurus, it is made possible by the mind’s capacity to enjoy one’s whole life from any temporal viewpoint: to relive past pleasures and enjoy future ones in anticipation, importantly including confidence in a serene closure. Enjoying your life is like enjoying a day as a whole, not least its sunset. Although pleasure is increased by greater duration (contrary to (...) a more favoured reading), and premature death therefore better avoided, the finitude of human life as such does not lessen its value, and even a premature death need not prevent a life’s being enjoyed as ‘complete’. In this chapter, the above interpretation is documented, explained, and contextualized in terms of Epicurus’ diametrical opposition to his contemporaries, the Cyrenaics. (shrink)

Overview of this minor Socratic school, including their skepticism and hedonistic ethics.

Unlike mainstream Cyrenaics, the Annicereans deny that friendship is chosen only because of its usefulness. Instead, the wise person cares for her friend and endures pains for him because of her goodwill and love. Nonetheless, the Annicereans maintain that your own pleasure is the telos and that a friend’s happiness isn’t intrinsically choiceworthy. Their position appears internally inconsistent or to attribute doublethink to the wise person. But we can avoid these problems. We have good textual grounds to attribute to (...) the Annicereans a doctrine of “non-hedonic habits,” which allows them to abandon psychological hedonism while still maintaining hedonism regarding well-being. (shrink)

In this contribution, I aim to show how locating the Platonic dialogues in the intellectual context of their own time can illuminate their philosophical content. I seek to show, with reference to a specific dialogue (the Theaetetus), how Plato responds to other thinkers of his time, and also to bring out how, by reconstructing Plato’s response, we can gain deeper insight into the way that Plato shapes the structure and form of his argument in the dialogue. In particular, I argue (...) that the subtler thinkers (hoi kompsoteroi) discussed by Plato’s Socrates at Tht. 156a3 are Aristippus and the early Cyrenaics. (Recent scholars, such as Giannantoni and Tsouna, have rejected this identification, which was earlier defended by Schleiermacher, Grote, Zeller and Mondolfo.) Further, I claim that, once we recognise that the subtler thinkers are most likely to be the early Cyrenaics, we can make better sense of the scope and content of the arguments Plato puts forward at Tht. 156a - 160e (especially 156a - 157c). Also, I suggest that this identification helps us to understand a crucial part of Tht. 184b - 186e. Here Plato, in exploring the account of perception offered at 156a - 157c, uses the metaphor of the Wooden Horse to illustrate the conception of perception that he attributes to thinkers such as Protagoras and, in my view, the early Cyrenaics, who maintain that knowledge is a form of perception. (shrink)

Once properly understood, how might Protagorean and Cyrenaic experiential empiricisms each comport with late twentieth century philosophical analysis of sense data, adverbial appears locutions, and reverentially opaque contexts? (In 2020 retrospect, had I listened more to Roderick Chisholm and less to my Princeton professors, a more apt philosophical perspective on Protagoras versus the Cyrenaics would have been in terms of early Husserl and the Göttingen phenomenologists on the differences between ‘objectivist’ and ‘subjectivist’ understandings of essential experience.).

The Cyrenaic school was a fourth-century BC philosophical movement, related both to the Socratic tradition and to Greek Scepticism. In ethics, Cyrenaic hedonism can be seen as one of many attempts made by the associates of Socrates and their followers to endorse his ethical outlook and to explore the implications of his method. In epistemology, there are close philosophical links between the Cyrenaics and the Sceptics, both Pyrrhonists and Academics. There are further links with modern philosophy as well, for (...) the Cyrenaics introduced a form of subjectivism which in some ways preannounces Cartesian views, endorsed by Malebranche and Hume and developed by Kant. This book reconstructs Cyrenaic epistemology, explains how it depends on Cyrenaic hedonism, locates it in the context of ancient debates, and discusses its connections with modern and contemporary epistemological positions. (shrink)

Aristippus of Cyrene was one of Socrates’ associates; he appears in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, where in 2.1.1 Socrates is said to have thought him “quite undisciplined” in matters of food, drink, and sex. Whether he himself was a philosophical hedonist or not is open to discussion; at any rate, the Cyrenaics who succeeded him are supposed to have accepted a variety of hedonism. But they are also supposed to have accepted something that looks like skepticism: we can have knowledge only (...) of our own affects, not of what occasioned them, and it is with this that the present book is primarily concerned. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two questions: (I) why do the Cyrenaics deny that we can gain knowledge concerning "external things," and (II) how wide-ranging is this denial? On the first question, I argue that the Cyrenaics are skeptical because of their contrast between the indubitable grasp we have of own affections, versus the inaccessibility of external things that cause these affections. Furthermore, this inaccessibility is due to our cognitive and perceptual limitations--it is an epistemological doctrine rooted in their (...) psychology--and not (pace Zilioli) due to any metaphysical theses regarding the external world. On the second question, I argue (pace Tsouna and Warren) that the scope of the Cyrenaics' skepticism is quite wide. Our reports on the Cyrenaics are inconsistent, but the most charitable and plausible reading results in attributing to the Cyrenaics skepticism not merely about the properties of external things (e.g., that the fire that warms me is really hot) of also of their nature and identity (e.g., that the object that warms me is a fire). However, it does not extend to skepticism regarding the existence of an external world. (shrink)

Argues that many of Zilioli's main contentions are mistaken--in particular, his contention that the Cyrenaics' skepticism is based upon an ambitious metaphysical thesis of indeterminacy.

Cet article s’attache à comprendre si les cyrénaïques étaient susceptibles d’être attaqués moyennant l’objection d’inactivité et, si oui, comment ils auraient pu essayer d’y répondre et quel type de vision morale ils auraient pu essayer de défendre. En traitant de ces questions, j’évaluerai la légitimité de l’interprétation du scepticisme cyrénaïque offerte par Jules Vuillemin. Je confirmerai ainsi la plausibilité de son interprétation et développerai en même temps l’exploration de la nature et de la portée de la philosophie cyrénaïque.

According to Xenophon, Socrates tried to persuade his associate Aristippus to moderate his excessive indulgence in wine, women, and food, arguing that only hard work can bring happiness. Aristippus wasn’t convinced. Instead, he and his followers espoused the most radical form of hedonism in ancient Western philosophy. Before the rise of the better known but comparatively ascetic Epicureans, the Cyrenaics pursued a way of life in which moments of pleasure, particularly bodily pleasure, held the highest value. In The Birth (...) of Hedonism, Kurt Lampe provides the most comprehensive account in any language of Cyrenaic ideas and behavior, revolutionizing the understanding of this neglected but important school of philosophy. -/- The Birth of Hedonism thoroughly and sympathetically reconstructs the doctrines and practices of the Cyrenaics, who were active between the fourth and third centuries BCE. The book examines not only Aristippus and the mainstream Cyrenaics, but also Hegesias, Anniceris, and Theodorus. Contrary to recent scholarship, the book shows that the Cyrenaics, despite giving primary value to discrete pleasurable experiences, accepted the dominant Greek philosophical belief that life-long happiness and the virtues that sustain it are the principal concerns of ethics. The book also offers the first in-depth effort to understand Theodorus’s atheism and Hegesias’s pessimism, both of which are extremely unusual in ancient Greek philosophy and which raise the interesting question of hedonism’s relationship to pessimism and atheism. Finally, the book explores the “new Cyrenaicism” of the nineteenth-century writer and classicist Walter Pater, who drew out the enduring philosophical interest of Cyrenaic hedonism more than any other modern thinker. (shrink)

This is not a long book—but it is surprising that it is as long as it is. The Cyrenaics are one of a number of more or less shadowy philosophical schools which emerged in the Greek world in the 4th century BC and later. Well known are Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum; and relatively well served by the tradition are the Stoics and the Epicureans, as well as the various later varieties of sceptic; while the Cynics are remembered at (...) least by reputation and anecdote. The Cyrenaics are altogether murkier. No text composed by a Cyrenaic philosopher of any period survives. Our knowledge of them rests on a handful of sources, almost all of them reports of doctrine rather than genuine fragments, none of them detailed, most of them late, generally from the works of commentators, at best neutral, at worst positively hostile, all with their own axes to grind. The best testimony consists of a mere three pages in Sextus Empiricus’s invaluable doxography of different accounts of the criterion of truth in adversus Mathemticos 7. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to assess the evidence on Cyrenaic solipsism and show how and why some views endorsed by the Cyrenaics appear to be committing them to solipsism. After evaluating the fascinating case for Cyrenaic solipsism, the paper shall deal with an (often) underestimated argument on language attributed to the Cyrenaics, whose logic – if I reconstruct it well – implies that after all the Cyrenaics cannot have endorsed a radical solipsism. Yet, by drawing (...) an illuminating parallel with Wittgenstein’s argument on private language and inner sensations, a case is to be made for the Cyrenaics to have subscribed to a sort of ‘residual solipsism’, which in turn helps us to understand the notion of Cyrenaic privacy at a fuller extent. (shrink)

The monograph by Kurt Lampe is the first systematic attempt in any modern language to deal with the ethics of the Cyrenaics, in particular with their he­donism. The book offers a detailed reconstruction of the ethical doctrines of both the Cyrenaics of the first generation (such as Aristippus the Elder, his daughter Arete, her son Aristippus the Younger) and the Cyrenaics of the later sects (such as Anniceris, Hegesias, Theodorus the Godless). After dealing with mainstream and later (...) Cyrenaics... (shrink)

본고의 목적은 전기 키레네학파가 아리스티포스를 충실히 따르고자 했음에도, 절제 및 인식의 문제와 관련해서는 자신들의 학설에 아리스티포스의 신념을 성공적으로 반영했다고 평가하기 어렵다는 점을 보이는 일이다. 이를 위해 본고는 아리스티포스의 일화들 속에서 절제력을 중요시하고 욕망의 무한확대를 경계하기도 하는 그의 모습을 확인한다. 이어서 전기 학파의 쾌락 개념과 반행복주의를 서술하고, 도덕의 본래적 가치를 부정하는 그들의 입장을 설명하면서, 전기 학파와 아리스티포스의 공통점을 찾는다. 다음으로 전기 학파가 절제력에 대해 침묵했다는 문제점과 인식론적 회의주의를 무리하게 도입했다는 문제점을 제시하고, 바로 이 때문에 그들이 아리스티포스로부터 멀어지게 되었다고 해석한다. 마지막으로 본고는 (...) 이 두 문제점이 에피쿠로스와 밀의 쾌락주의적 윤리학에서 어떻게 처리되었는지 살펴봄으로써, 동적 쾌락을 추구하는 쾌락주의가 염세적 색깔을 띠지 않으려면 인간의 고급 능력 사용을 권장하고 인식론적 회의주의를 포기하거나 완화시킬 필요가 있다고 제안한다. (shrink)

Focuses on the theories of the Epicureans and Cyrenaics in light of Plato's and Aristotle's criticisms of hedonism. Closes with a brief discussion of how the Pyrrhonian skeptical conception of the telos compares to the Epicureans'.

Brief article on this hedonist, follower of Socrates, and founder of the Cyrenaic school.

The article explores similarities between the philosophies of Zhuangzi and Aristippus, focusing in particular on play and eudaimonism. The main thesis is that both authors encourage the cultivation of a playful mindset, defined in the paper as the “ludic self”, which operates as a strategy for leading a flourishing life. By shaping a fluid, unstructured identity, the ludic self promotes negative subtraction from the structuring power of social nexus and proactive adaptation to shifting circumstances. Furthermore, some aspects of these philosophies (...) present an inter-disciplinary convergence with scientific findings from the psycho-biology of play, concerned with the mobilization of cathected energies and the prevention, or resolution, of addictive states. These promising connections with the fields of psychology and biology also represent an original contribution in respect to the existing debates within Zhuangzi studies, and scholarship on the Cyrenaics. From a methodological point of view, the article pursues what Rorty defines as a “rational reconstruction”, which involves a re-interpretation of past philosophies in light of present debates, ideas and vocabularies with the aim of engaging a trans-cultural, trans-historical dialogue. The value of this operation relies upon the universality of human experience, which always allows re-interpretation and re-actualization of past philosophies as a dialogical exercise of questioning otherness within a hermeneutic framework. (shrink)

In two passages from Xenophon's Memorabilia, Socrates refutes Aristippus, first by a rather brutal brand of Realpolitik , then by refusing to answer Aristippus' questions about the good and the beautiful . This article argues that the nasty politics that emerge in Memorabilia 2.1 are not Socratic, but rather the natural consequence of Aristippean hedonism. Political considerations of another sort drive Socrates' tactics in Memorabilia 3.8, where his evasive manoeuvres are driven by his desire to avoid a direct confrontation with (...) hedonism. Socrates' own views are hedonistic in some sense, as revealed by his otherwise irrelevant discussion of pleasing home plans and altar sites at the end of 3.8, but Socrates does not wish to reveal as much to companions lacking his self-control. Socrates' treatment of Aristippus has as much to do with politics as with pleasure. (shrink)

The Cyrenaics are hedonists who have difficulty finding a stable place in their theory either for one's life as a whole or for other‐concern. Epicurus tries to avoid their problems by his theories of friendship and of justice, with incomplete success. The Sceptics face problems in trying to claim that the Sceptic will be benevolent to others despite achieving tranquility as his final end.