Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res
Tentantem majora, fere praesentibus aequum.
“Every aspect and manner of life and fortune fitted Aristippus; he aimed
at what was greater, yet kept an even mind whatever his present condition.”
As we have already said, this school was incompletely Socratic,
inasmuch as philosophy was not an end in itself, knowledge whether of
oneself or of other matters had no intrinsic interest for them; philosophy
was only a means towards pleasurable living, enabling them so to analyse and
classify the several experiences of life as to render a theory of
satisfactory existence possible. With them first came into prominence a
phrase which held a large place in all subsequent Greek philosophy, the
End of existence, by which was meant that which summed up the good in
existence, that which made life worth living, that which was good and
desirable in and for itself, and not merely as a means to something else.
What then according to the Cyrenaics was the End of life? Their answer was
that life had at each moment its own End, in the pleasure of that moment.
The past was gone, the future not yet with us; remembrance of the one, fear
or hope of the other, might contribute to affect the purity of the present
pleasure, but such as it was the present pleasure was a thing apart,
complete in and for itself. Nor was its perfection qualified by any question
of the means by which it was procured; the moment’s pleasure was
pleasurable, whatever men might say as to the manner of its procuring.
A History of Greek Philosophy /
THE INCOMPLETE SOCRATICS /
ARISTIPPUS AND THE CYRENAICS
