Cyrenaics

The Cyrenaics or Kyrenaics (

The history of the Cyrenaic school begins with Aristippus of Cyrene, who was born around 435 BCE. He came to Athens as a young man and became a pupil of Socrates. We have only limited knowledge of his movements after the execution of Socrates in 399 BCE, although he is said to have lived for a time in the court of Dionysius of Syracuse.

It is uncertain precisely which doctrines ascribed to the Cyrenaic school were formulated by Aristippus.

After the time of the younger Aristippus, the school broke up into different factions, represented by Anniceris, Hegesias, and Theodorus, who all developed rival interpretations of Cyrenaic doctrines, many of which were responses to the new system of hedonistic philosophy laid down by Epicurus.^[6] By the middle of the 3rd century BC, the Cyrenaic school was obsolete; Epicureanism had successfully beaten its Cyrenaic rivals by offering a system which was more sophisticated.^[7]

Philosophy

The Cyrenaics were

The Cyrenaics were known for their skeptical theory of knowledge. They reduced logic to a basic doctrine concerning the criterion of truth.^[10] They thought that we can know with certainty our immediate sense-experiences (for instance, that I am having a sweet sensation now) but can know nothing about the nature of the objects that cause these sensations (for instance, that the honey is sweet).^[5] They also denied that we can have knowledge of what the experiences of other people are like.^[11]

All knowledge is of one's own immediate sensation. These sensations are motions which are purely subjective, and are painful, indifferent or pleasant, according as they are violent, tranquil or gentle.^[5][12] Further they are entirely individual, and can in no way be described as being of the world objectively. Feeling, therefore, is the only possible criterion of knowledge and of conduct.^[5] Our ways of being affected are alone knowable.^[13] Thus the sole aim for everyone should be pleasure.

Ethics

Cyrenaicism deduces a single, universal aim for all people which is pleasure. Furthermore, all feeling is momentary and homogeneous. It follows that past and future pleasure have no real existence for us, and that among present pleasures there is no distinction of kind.^[12] Socrates had spoken of the higher pleasures of the intellect; the Cyrenaics denied the validity of this distinction and said that bodily pleasures, being more simple and more intense, were preferable.^[8] Momentary pleasure, preferably of a physical kind, is the only good for humans.^[14] When it comes to pain the Cyrenaics held the opinion that pain which occurs suddenly is more difficult to endure than pain that can be foreseen.^[15]

However some actions which give immediate pleasure can create more than their equivalent of pain. The wise person should be in control of pleasures rather than be enslaved to them, otherwise pain will result, and this requires judgement to evaluate the different pleasures of life.

The Cyrenaic ideal was alien to Christianity, and, in general, subsequent thinkers found it an ideal of hopeless pessimism. Yet in much later times it has found expression in many ethical and literary works, and it is common also in other ancient non-Hellenic literature. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, there are quatrains in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and pessimistic verses in the book of Ecclesiastes which might have been uttered by Aristippus. So in Byron and Heine there is the same tendency to seek relief from the intellectual cul-de-sac in frankly aesthetic satisfaction. Thus Cyrenaicism did not entirely vanish with its absorption in Epicureanism.^[17]

See also

• Existential nihilism
• Pleasure principle (psychology)
• Charvaka
• Subjective idealism

Notes