One can easily understand this as the doctrine of such a man as Aristippus,
the easy-going man of the world, the courtier and the wit, the favourite of
the tyrant Dionysius; it fits in well enough with a life of genial
self-indulgence; it always reappears whenever a man has reconciled himself
‘to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.’ But life is not always, nor for
most persons at any time, a thing of ease and soft enchantments, and the
Cyrenaic philosophy must remain for the general work-a-day world a stale
exotic. ‘Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,’ is a maxim
which comes as a rule only to the lips of the worldly successful, while they
think themselves strong enough to stand alone. But this solitude of
selfishness neither works nor lasts; every man at some time becomes ‘the
hindmost,’ if not before, at least in the hour of death for him or his; at
that hour he is hardly disposed, for himself or those he loves, to repeat
his maxim.
A History of Greek Philosophy /
THE INCOMPLETE SOCRATICS /
ARISTIPPUS AND THE CYRENAICS
