Cyrenaics (redirected from Cyrenaic)

Cyrenaics (sīrĭnā`ĭks, sĭ–), one of the minor schools of Greek philosophy, flourishing in the late 4th and early 3d cent. B.C. Cyrenaic philosophy taught that present individual pleasure is the highest good. It is thus an early version of hedonism, but its importance in philosophy declined in favor of the later version of Epicurus. It drew upon certain of Socrates' ethical views and also upon aspects of the view of knowledge held by the Sophists. Aristippus of Cyrene, its founder, held that since each person can know only his own sensations, there can be no universal standard of what is pleasurable—hence, all pleasures are equally valuable. His followers modified this doctrine by distinguishing between greater and lesser pleasures. Theodorus held man's happiness to be a state of cheerfulness, while Anniceris stressed the pleasures of friendship, society, and patriotism. Hegesias (called the Death-Persuader) taught that a happy life is pure illusion and that the complete suppression of pain, i.e., death, is the only end worth pursuing.

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Cyrenaics

Greek school of ethics. Cyrene was the centre of its activity and the birthplace of several of its members. Though the elder Aristippus (c. 435–366 BC), a pupil of Socrates, is generally recognized as its founder, the school flourished only in the late 4th century and early 3rd century BC. The Cyrenaics held that the only good is the pleasure of the moment; the good life thus consists of the pursuit of such pleasures. The doctrines of the later Cyrenaics were eventually incorporated into Epicureanism.

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Cyrenaics 

a school of philosophy in ancient Greece that developed Socrates’ principles along the lines of a consistent hedonism. Founded by Aristippus of Cyrene, it was continued by his daughter Arete and grandson Aristippus and, later, by Theodorus, Hegesias, and Annikeris. The founder of the school, Aristippus, taught (as had Protagoras) that sensations tell nothing about objects in the external world but only correspond to mental movements and therefore are always true. Since there are no external criteria for evaluating mental movements or sensations (of which there are three kinds—pleasure, pain, and indifference), the concept of good, central to Socratic ethics, is replaced by that of pleasure. Thus, for the Cyrenaics, as for the Epicureans, the goal of human life is pleasure.

The consistent pursuit of individual pleasure brought some Cyrenaics (Theodorus) close to the Cynics’ contempt for conventional rules and religious traditions; others (Hegesias) pessimistically concluded that the hedonistic ideal was unrealizable in human life and that, therefore, one may strive only for the absence of suffering—death. Annikeris’ high regard for friendship, patriotism, and family feeling may be seen as an effort to transcend the Cyrenaics’ hedonism and as a foreshadowing of Epicureanism.

SOURCES

Aristippi et Cyrenaicorum fragmenta. Edited by E. Mannebach. Leiden-Cologne, 1961.

REFERENCES

Gompertz, T. Grecheskie mysliteli, vol. 2. St. Petersburg, 1913.
Losev, A. F. Istoriia antichnoi estetiki: Sofisty, Sokrat, Platon. Moscow, 1969. Pages 108–18. (Bibliography.)

V. P. GAIDENKO