Cyrénaïsme

The Cyrénaïsme is a school of Greek philosophy founded by Aristippe de Cyrène, one of the “Socratiques”, the disciples of Socrate. The school is especially associated with the ethical Hédonisme in . The school remained especially in the city of Cyrène, in Libya, which explains why they are called Cyrénaïques (or Cyrénéens ). Cyrénaiques , philosophical Greeks who had as a chief Aristippe de Cyrène: they taught that the man should live only for the pleasure. They were melted with the Épicurien S.

History

Aristippe de Cyrène was the founder of this school. The second generation, according to Diogène Laërce, was his/her daughter Arété, Ptolémée of Ethiopia and Antipatros de Cyrène. Then the third generation includes/understands Aristippe the Young person (known as also Matrodidacte , because his/her Arété mother educated it), Theodore, initially called the Atheist , then Divine the , and of the disciples of Antipatros who were Épiménide de Cyrène, Parébate, Hégésias, which advised the suicide, and Annicéris, which delivered Plato.

Certain historians think that it is in fact Aristippe the Young person who formulated the majority of the theses allotted traditionally to his grandfather, perhaps in reaction to the doctrines of Épicure (341-270) which was perhaps contemporary of this third generation. Others think on the contrary that certain hedonists moderated like Annicéris or Theodore the Atheist inspired the ideas of Épicure, which made the synthesis of the Atomisme abdéritain and Cyrénéens.

There does not remain to us any document of Cyrénaïques and we do not have access that to indirect quotations.

Doctrines

Ethics

According to Cyrénaïques (or testimonys which we have on them), the pleasure is the sovereign well, the end of the human life.

They define this supreme good as “a soft movement accompanied by feeling ”.

The pleasure is a movement soft , whereas the pain is a hard movement . This definition is thus opposed to the moderate version of Épicure for which the end is a Ataraxie, a deprivation of pain and a kind of rest .

This rest would be insufficient for Cyrénaïques, similar to a sleep, an apathy if there is no feeling, and not a true happiness. It is very original in the Greek thought to make of a movement (a movement soft ) the goal of the life whereas the rest is usually conceived like the end and the goal of any movement (for example at Aristote).

The end is what is required for oneself, which has what morals calls an intrinsic value. The true end is thus the pleasure and it is always a good.

One cannot feel the pleasure of others and its personal pleasure alone is a good. It is thus an hedonism and a selfishness (see also Hégésias for an extreme form of this criticism of the Amitié).

They admit a distinction between pleasures of the body and pleasures of the heart but insist that the first are most important (even if certain texts seem to say that they all are equal).

They go until saying that the end of the lifetime is the pleasure and not happiness (whereas the Eudémonisme is a constant of the majority of Greek ethics at Aristote or the Epicureans). For them, a happiness is anything else only one sum of particular pleasures and one cannot thus put a future happiness above a current pleasure.

Canonical

Their sensualism and their relativism (inspired of arguments of Protagoras) influenced the Scepticisme and are sometimes quoted in the texts pyrrhoniens.

Sources

(II, “Life of Aristippe”);
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors (VII, 190-200);
Plutarque, Against Colotes (1120c-1121e).

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