It is possible to trace a short historical context for the earliest Greek hedonists, starting with the origination of their epistemic defences in Heraclitus of Ephesus, who was a pre-Socratic philosopher flourishing in the 6th-5th centuries BC. G.T.W. Patrick, in his excellent introduction to, and translation of, the extant fragments of Heraclitus, traces the impact of Heraclitus’ perceptive theories on the subsequent history of philosophical development, including Plato’s opposition, the appropriations of the Stoics, and the development of immanent lawfulness. What concerns us here, however, is his connection to Cyrenaic philosophy. This bridge occurs via the Sophists, particularly Protagoras, who seems to be among a number of wise-men who learned an early lesson from Heraclitus, albeit without taking the full course. Walter Pater describes the preliminary stages of Heraclitean philosophy as including the dizzying doctrine of motion - the so-called flux theory - which seemed, to those who heard it, to set the stage for the impossibility of fixed knowledge. Consequently, we find Socrates and Plato determined to find stability beyond mere appearance, either in the concepts trapped within man’s mind, or in the alternate world of perfect forms. Others, like Protagoras, swallowed the somewhat skeptical consequences, and made man the measure of all things, germinating the seed of relativity already present in Heracliteanism.
The orthodox Cyrenaics milk this subjectivism for its pragmatic value, and in place of the blank cheque of Protagoreanism, substitute an anti-metaphysical phenomenalism. We are not concerned with an alleged ontological cause beyond or behind our experiences, rather, we are entirely enamoured with the experience itself. We are also not committed to the idea that our individual affections report the nature of external objects in themselves, but only as they appear to us. There is a dyadic, interactive element operative in all experiences, and though we cannot be mistaken regarding these effects on our faculties, this does not entitle us to make dogmatic claims about the nature of those objects once stripped of all individual affective qualities. Protagoras insists that when one man calls a bowl of water “warm”, and another reports that it is “cool”, both are correctly assessing the truth of the water’s nature, but only for themselves. In a subtle shift that makes all the difference, the Cyrenaics suggest that instead, it is true for each individual that the water appears or feels warm or cold to themselves. We therefore escape creating as many different truths as there are beings to profess them, and restrict ourselves to claims about how objects appear to us, rather than what the objects must be like in the vacuum of independent being.
One might object that with this clever epistemological side-step, the Cyrenaics are ultimately ignoring the metaphysical issue altogether, and the objection is quite correct. The Cyrenaics dispense with highly abstract and speculative inquiries which, they argue, have little practical bearing on the pursuit of pleasure, and with this shift of focus we return to the common-sense perspective of most ordinary people: that what we see and touch daily is of greater concern than whatever ultimate substance may or may not be lurking beneath the surface. Idealists and materialists have waged half-blind wars for centuries. Leave them to it. We can rest assured that both are holding some of the right cards, without, as Walter Pater would say, “acquiescing in some facile orthodoxy”, because
Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. “Philosophy is the microscope of thought.” The theory or idea or system which requires of us the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identified with ourselves, or of what is only conventional, has no real claim upon us.
The final puzzle-piece is the emergence of Socrates, whose approach and example called for greater self-reflection and consistency in the beliefs of his followers, one among them of course being Aristippus of Cyrene. Socrates was not a hedonist, but he was not above pleasant living. The Socratic influence on Aristippus, however, seems to be primarily the result of questioning and prodding, which everywhere prompts interlocutors to harmonize their thoughts and actions, and in this particular case, the alignment is made in accordance with the pleasure principle. Rather than mere predisposition and instinct, Aristippus became better able to rhetorically defend his way of life, wittily respond to critics, and engage in practices more conducive to achieving his desired outcomes. It was left for his grandson of the same name, the so-called Metrodidact, to expand Cyrenaic philosophy more formally.
Sources:
O’Keefe, T. (n.d.). Cyrenaics. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved January 26, 2024, from https://iep.utm.edu/cyrenaics
Pater, W. (1973). Marius the Epicurean / 1. Blackwell.
Pater, W. (2021). The Renaissance. Dancing Unicorn Books
Patrick, G.T.W. (2015). The Fragments of the Work of Heraclitus of Ephesus on Nature; Translated from the Greek Text of Bywater, with an Introduction Historical and Critical. Digireads.com Publishing.
