The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

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

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References in periodicals archive

Unlike mainstream Cyrenaics, the Annicereans deny that friendship is chosen only because of its usefulness: the wise person cares for her friend and endures pains for him because of her goodwill and love.

Phronesis: vol. 62, no. 3, July 2017

(24.) On the Cyrenaic derivation of prudence from the fear of punishment, see Richard Parry, "Ancient Ethical Theory," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), ed.

Teletrauma: Distance in Burke's Philosophical Enquiry

In the first, Long examines the Socratic legacy, and discusses the positions of the Cynics and the Cyrenaics. The second chapter, by Michael Erler and Schofield, bears on Epicurean ethics, and the third, by Brad Inwood and Pierluigi Donini, addresses Stoic ethics.

Keimpe Algra, Jonathan Barnes, Jaap Mansfeld, and Malcolm Schofield, eds.: The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy

(18) Pater applies the term "Epicurean" quite broadly, for he seeks to define it as an aestheticizing impulse that spans history: "Every age of European thought," his narrator writes, "has had its Cyrenaics or Epicureans, under many disguises" (1:144).

Burning, burial, and the critique of stoicism in Pater's Marius the Epicurean

It contains, in an appendix, a translation of the evidence bearing on Cyrenaic epistemology: if the Cyrenaics are not familiar to you, this book provides a good introduction to hall of what little we know about them, and registers some views about the other half (hedonism) as well.

Voula Tsouna, The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School

Segment 3 is characterized by Cyrenaics philosophy.

A Six-Segment Message Strategy Wheel

The Cyrenaics assert that: (1) particular pleasure is the highest good, and happiness is valued not for its own sake, but only for the sake of the particular pleasures that compose it; (2) we should not forego present pleasures for the sake of obtaining greater pleasure in the future.

The Cyrenaics on pleasure, happiness, and future-concern. (Philosophical Abstracts)

For example, Bailey illuminatingly cites the Cyrenaics as counterexamples to Burnyeat's claim that the Greeks never applied the notion of belief to the contents of mental states; and the account of skepticism's relation to ordinary life, in the context of the criticism of Hallie, is attractively handled.

Alan Bailey, Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonean Scepticism

Epistemology is discussed by Jacques Brunschwig (introduction, Pyrrho, and the Cyrenaics), Elizabeth Asmis (Epicureans), Michael Frede (Stoics), and Malcolm Schofield (Academics).

The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy

Here she provides the fullest overview to date of Hellenistic moral thought, beginning with Aristotle and covering the later Peripatetics, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Cyrenaics, and the Skeptics both Academic and Pyrrhonist.

The Morality of Happiness