Walter Pater’s “Preface” to THE RENAISSANCE: STUDIES IN ART AND POETRY

Here I present Walter Pater’s Preface to The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, lightly edited and reformatted, reproduced here for ease of reference. This preface briefly illustrates Pater’s aesthetic approach, which is of utmost importance for New Cyrenaics, as one key source of pleasure. 

Preface:

Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it. The value of these attempts has most often been in the suggestive and penetrating things said by the way. Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have. Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty, not in the most abstract but in the most concrete terms possible, to find not its universal formula, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of æsthetics. 

“To see the object as in itself it really is,” has been justly said to be the aim of all true criticism whatever, and in æsthetic criticism the first step towards seeing one’s object as it really is, is to know one’s own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realise it distinctly. The objects with which æsthetic criticism deals—music, poetry, artistic and accomplished forms of human life—are indeed receptacles of so many powers or forces: they possess, like the products of nature, so many virtues or qualities. What is this song or picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me? What effect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? and if so, what sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by its presence, and under its influence? The answers to these questions are the original facts with which the æsthetic critic has to do; and, as in the study of light, of morals, of number, one must realise such primary data for one’s self, or not at all. And he who experiences these impressions strongly, and drives directly at the discrimination and analysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the abstract question what beauty is in itself, or what its exact relation to truth or experience—metaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysical questions elsewhere. He may pass them all by as being, answerable or not, of no interest to him. 

The æsthetic critic, then, regards all the objects with which he has to do, all works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as powers or forces producing pleasurable sensations, each of a more or less peculiar or unique kind. This influence he feels, and wishes to explain, by analysing and reducing it to its elements. To him, the picture, the landscape, the engaging personality in life or in a book, La Gioconda, the hills of Carrara, Pico of Mirandola, are valuable for their virtues, as we say, in speaking of a herb, a wine, a gem; for the property each has of affecting one with a special, a unique, impression of pleasure. Our education becomes complete in proportion as our susceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and variety. And the function of the æsthetic critic is to distinguish, to analyse, and separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair personality in life or in a book, produces this special impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced. His end is reached when he has disengaged that virtue, and noted it, as a chemist notes some natural element, for himself and others; and the rule for those who would reach this end is stated with great exactness in the words of a recent critic of Sainte-Beuve:—De se borner à connaître de près les belles choses, et à s’en nourrir en exquis amateurs, en humanistes accomplis. [To limit oneself to knowing beautiful things up close, and to nourishing oneself from them as exquisite amateurs, as accomplished humanists.]

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects. He will remember always that beauty exists in many forms. To him all periods, types, schools of taste, are in themselves equal. In all ages there have been some excellent workmen, and some excellent work done. The question he asks is always:—In whom did the stir, the genius, the sentiment of the period find itself? where was the receptacle of its refinement, its elevation, its taste? “The ages are all equal,” says William Blake, “but genius is always above its age.” 

Often it will require great nicety to disengage this virtue from the commoner elements with which it may be found in combination. Few artists, not Goethe or Byron even, work quite cleanly, casting off all débris, and leaving us only what the heat of their imagination has wholly fused and transformed. Take, for instance, the writings of Wordsworth. The heat of his genius, entering into the substance of his work, has crystallised a part, but only a part, of it; and in that great mass of verse there is much which might well be forgotten. But scattered up and down it, sometimes fusing and transforming entire compositions, like the Stanzas on Resolution and Independence, or the Ode on the Recollections of Childhood, sometimes, as if at random, depositing a fine crystal here or there, in a matter it does not wholly search through and transmute, we trace the action of his unique, incommunicable faculty, that strange, mystical sense of a life in natural things, and of man’s life as a part of nature, drawing strength and colour and character from local influences, from the hills and streams, and from natural sights and sounds. Well! that is the virtue, the active principle in Wordsworth’s poetry; and then the function of the critic of Wordsworth is to follow up that active principle, to disengage it, to mark the degree in which it penetrates his verse. 

The subjects of the following studies are taken from the history of the Renaissance, and touch what I think the chief points in that complex, many-sided movement. I have explained in the first of them what I understand by the word, giving it a much wider scope than was intended by those who originally used it to denote that revival of classical antiquity in the fifteenth century which was only one of many results of a general excitement and enlightening of the human mind, but of which the great aim and achievements of what, as Christian art, is often falsely opposed to the Renaissance, were another result. This outbreak of the human spirit may be traced far into the middle age itself, with its motives already clearly pronounced, the care for physical beauty, the worship of the body, the breaking down of those limits which the religious system of the middle age imposed on the heart and the imagination. I have taken as an example of this movement, this earlier Renaissance within the middle age itself, and as an expression of its qualities, two little compositions in early French; not because they constitute the best possible expression of them, but because they help the unity of my series, inasmuch as the Renaissance ends also in France, in French poetry, in a phase of which the writings of Joachim du Bellay are in many ways the most perfect illustration. The Renaissance, in truth, put forth in France an aftermath, a wonderful later growth, the products of which have to the full that subtle and delicate sweetness which belongs to a refined and comely decadence, just as its earliest phases have the freshness which belongs to all periods of growth in art, the charm of ascêsis, of the austere and serious girding of the loins in youth. 

But it is in Italy, in the fifteenth century, that the interest of the Renaissance mainly lies,—in that solemn fifteenth century which can hardly be studied too much, not merely for its positive results in the things of the intellect and the imagination, its concrete works of art, its special and prominent personalities, with their profound æsthetic charm, but for its general spirit and character, for the ethical qualities of which it is a consummate type. 

The various forms of intellectual activity which together make up the culture of an age, move for the most part from different starting-points, and by unconnected roads. As products of the same generation they partake indeed of a common character, and unconsciously illustrate each other; but of the producers themselves, each group is solitary, gaining what advantage or disadvantage there may be in intellectual isolation. Art and poetry, philosophy and the religious life, and that other life of refined pleasure and action in the conspicuous places of the world, are each of them confined to its own circle of ideas, and those who prosecute either of them are generally little curious of the thoughts of others. There come, however, from time to time, eras of more favourable conditions, in which the thoughts of men draw nearer together than is their wont, and the many interests of the intellectual world combine in one complete type of general culture. The fifteenth century in Italy is one of these happier eras, and what is sometimes said of the age of Pericles is true of that of Lorenzo:—it is an age productive in personalities, many-sided, centralised, complete. Here, artists and philosophers and those whom the action of the world has elevated and made keen, do not live in isolation, but breathe a common air, and catch light and heat from each other’s thoughts. There is a spirit of general elevation and enlightenment in which all alike communicate. The unity of this spirit gives unity to all the various products of the Renaissance; and it is to this intimate alliance with the mind, this participation in the best thoughts which that age produced, that the art of Italy in the fifteenth century owes much of its grave dignity and influence. 

I have added an essay on Winckelmann, as not incongruous with the studies which precede it, because Winckelmann, coming in the eighteenth century, really belongs in spirit to an earlier age. By his enthusiasm for the things of the intellect and the imagination for their own sake, by his Hellenism, his life-long struggle to attain to the Greek spirit, he is in sympathy with the humanists of a previous century. He is the last fruit of the Renaissance, and explains in a striking way its motive and tendencies. 

1873.

Sources:

Pater, W. (2019). The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. Litres.

Walter Pater’s “Conclusion” to THE RENAISSANCE: STUDIES IN ART AND POETRY

Here I present Walter Pater’s infamous conclusion to The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, lightly edited and reformatted, reproduced here for ease of reference. The entire book from which it is taken comes highly recommended for the student of aesthetics, but this closing chapter is most essential for understanding the thrust of New Cyrenaicism, especially as expanded upon in Pater’s only novel, Marius the Epicurean, which was published some 12 years later. 

Conclusion:

Λέγει που Ἡράκλειτος ὃτι πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει.*

To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without—our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But those elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibres, are present not in the human body alone: we detect them in places most remote from it. Our physical life is a perpetual motion of them—the passage of the blood, the waste and repairing of the lenses of the eye, the modification of the tissues of the brain under every ray of light and sound—processes which science reduces to simpler and more elementary forces. Like the elements of which we are composed, the action of these forces extends beyond us: it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven in many currents; and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations. That clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under which we group them—a design in a web, the actual threads of which pass out beyond it. This at least of flamelike our life has, that it is but the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner or later on their ways. 

Or if we begin with the inward world of thought and feeling, the whirlpool is still more rapid, the flame more eager and devouring. There it is no longer the gradual darkening of the eye, the gradual fading of colour from the wall—movements of the shore-side, where the water flows down indeed, though in apparent rest—but the race of the mid-stream, a drift of momentary acts of sight and passion and thought. At first sight experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action. But when reflexion begins to play upon these objects they are dissipated under its influence; the cohesive force seems suspended like some trick of magic; each object is loosed into a group of impressions—colour, odour, texture—in the mind of the observer. And if we continue to dwell in thought on this world, not of objects in the solidity with which language invests them, but of impressions, unstable, flickering, inconsistent, which burn and are extinguished with our consciousness of them, it contracts still further: the whole scope of observation is dwarfed into the narrow chamber of the individual mind. Experience, already reduced to a group of impressions, is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without. Every one of those impressions is the impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a world. Analysis goes a step farther still, and assures us that those impressions of the individual mind to which, for each one of us, experience dwindles down, are in perpetual flight; that each of them is limited by time, and that as time is infinitely divisible, each of them is infinitely divisible also; all that is actual in it being a single moment, gone while we try to apprehend it, of which it may ever be more truly said that it has ceased to be than that it is. To such a tremulous wisp constantly re-forming itself on the stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our life fines itself down. It is with this movement, with the passage and dissolution of impressions, images, sensations, that analysis leaves off—that continual vanishing away, that strange, perpetual weaving and unweaving of ourselves. 

Philosophiren, says Novalis, ist dephlegmatisiren vivificiren. The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us,—for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? 

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist’s hands, or the face of one’s friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy of Comte, or of Hegel, or of our own. 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. 

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had clung always about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that remained; and he was not biassed by anything in his previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! we are all condamnés, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve—les hommes sont tous condamnés à mort avec des sursis indéfinis: we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among “the children of this world,” in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion—that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake. 

1868. 

* [This is a quote from Plato’s Cratylus. “Heraclitus says everything gives way and nothing stands fast.”]

Sources:

Pater, W. (2019). The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. Litres.

Kurt Lampe’s “Aristippus on Education, Virtue, and Happiness” from THE BIRTH OF HEDONISM

Here I present Kurt Lampe’s section regarding “Aristippus on Education, Virtue, and Happiness” from Chapter 4 of his excellent book The Birth of Hedonism, lightly edited, with select content underlined for emphasis and ease of reference.

Aristippus on Education, Virtue, and Happiness:

Pleasure, pain, and distress are not the only items of value in Aristippean thinking. The evidence for his commitment to the development of philosophical insight and ethical character is extremely strong. In this section I explore the anecdotal evidence for the value he places on education, wisdom, and virtue. In many anecdotes Aristippus argues that “education” (paideia), and especially the education he himself offers, is a precious thing. Two examples will suffice:

When someone asked him how much he was asking for the education of his son, [Aristippus] replied, “A thousand drachmas.” The other said, “By Heracles! That’s an exorbitant demand! I could buy a slave for a thousand drachmas!” “Then you’ll have two slaves,” Aristippus replied, “your son and the one you buy.” (Plut. Mor. 4f = SSR 4A.5; cf. D.L. 2.72)

Aristippus said that he took money from his associates not in order to use it, but so they would know on what they should spend their money. (D.L. 2.72; cf. Gnom. Vat. 743 n. 24 = SSR 4a.7)

The primary reason that numerous anecdotes on this topic have been preserved is because Socrates did not accept payments, so Aristippus’s fee-charging arrangements opened him to accusations of “un-Socratic” behavior. Thus it is hardly surprising to find him defending the merit of his product. But there is no reason to doubt that Aristippus genuinely believed the training he offered was excellent value for money. While he may have taught the rhetorical art of “speaking well,” the anecdotes consistently suggest that he provided much more: as he implies above, his students were transforming their “slavish” characters into “free” ones. Having a “free” character might involve not only the capacity to speak with sophistication but also the understanding and self-possession to merit the privileges accorded to free males (as opposed to women or slaves) in the hierarchical world of Greek antiquity. Another saying on this topic corroborates the transformational power of education, but does so rather differently: “When he was asked how those who are educated exceed those who are not, he said, ‘In the same way as tame horses exceed wild ones’” (D.L. 2.69). Rather than moving from slavishness to freedom, these pupils move from savagery to civilization. It is unclear precisely how Aristippus believes tame horses exceed wild ones. It is obvious, however, that breaking and training a horse not only gives it the capacity to perform new tasks, but also transforms its attitudes about many experiences and provides it with a new way of life. Aristippus is suggesting that the education of a human being has the same breadth of effect, and therefore is worth every obol.

The content of this character- and life-transforming pedagogy is surely nothing other than Aristippus’s own philosophy. Certainly this is the case regarding his daughter: “He instructed his daughter Arete in the best fashion, sharing with her his training in being disdainful of excess” (D.L. 2.72). This description emphasizes the exercises through which Arete accustoms herself to a new mode of thinking and feeling: Aristippus “shared his training” (sunaskōn); he taught Arete “to be disdainful of excess” (huperoptikēn tou pleionos einai). These exercises would have been underpinned by reasoning about what is good and what is bad, as the anonymous authors of the spurious Socratic Epistles have imaginatively reconstructed.

In the twenty-seventh epistle, Aristippus, who has fallen ill on the way home from Sicily, indicates that he has received a letter from Arete complaining about how the officials in Cyrene are treating her. Aristippus counsels her,

I instruct you to manage this business with the rulers in such a way that my advice benefits you. That advice was not to desire what is excessive. In this way you’ll live out your life in the best fashion, if you’re disdainful of every excess. Those men will never wrong you so much that you’ll be in want, since you still have the two orchards, and they suffice even for a luxurious life. Even if only the property in Berenice were left, it wouldn’t fail to support an excellent lifestyle. (Socr. Ep. 27.2)

Here the authors imagine Aristippus in the very act of “instructing” his daughter (hupotithemai). It is clear that he has already taught the principles of “not wanting excess” (mē tou pleonos orignasthai) and “being disdainful of every excess” (huperoptikē pantos . . . tou pleonos). It is now a matter of helping her to see how they apply in this circumstance. Arete already has several properties in and around Cyrene. Aristippus urges her to consider that those properties are more than sufficient for an “excellent” and even “luxurious” lifestyle. Note, therefore, that “disdaining excess” does not entail embracing austerity: excess is defined relative to what is actually good, which for Aristippus is pleasure, not excluding luxurious enjoyment. Aristippus makes this explicit later: “Since you share this pleasant lifestyle with those women, let the officials in Cyrene wrong you as much as they want: they won’t wrong you with respect to your natural end” (27.3). The phrase “natural end” (phusikon telos) is anachronistic for Aristippus, but we can nevertheless appreciate how this letter recreates his effort, through both teaching Arete principles and training her in their application, to mold her thoughts and feelings with the rational standards of judgment articulated by their shared philosophy. The result at which this kind of education aims is not only understanding of what is good and bad, but also everyday feelings and actions in accord with this understanding. In short, it is a transformation of both belief and desire.

Since it is a behavioral disposition with a rational underpinning, we can usefully think of the ability to disdain excess as one of the virtues of Aristippean philosophy. In fact, we could call it Aristippus’s version of “temperance” or “soundness of mind” (sōphrosunē). Numerous anecdotes display the value Aristippus attributes to this disposition and the positive consequences he recognizes from it. In one family of anecdotes he is threatened at sea, either by pirates or by his fellow passengers. He ensures his safety by tossing his money overboard (D.L. 2.77, Suda A 3909, Gnom. Vat. 743 n. 39 = SSR 4a.79, 82). After all, he needs his life, but not his money. In a saying recorded by Plutarch, Aristippus explains the virtue of disdaining excess with a medical metaphor:

Anyone who remembers Aristippus would be especially amazed by people who haven’t lost anything, have many possessions, but always still need more [pleonos]. He used to say, “If someone eats a lot and drinks a lot and is never satisfied, he goes to the doctor and asks what his illness is, what his condition is, and how he can be freed from it. But if someone has five couches and wants ten, or possesses ten tables and buys as many again, or isn’t satisfied when plenty of estates and money are available, but remains stressed, sleepless, and insatiable with everything, this man doesn’t think he needs someone to care for him and show him why he has this illness.” (Mor. 524a–b = SSR 4a.73)

Those who are always dissatisfied, no matter what they acquire, have an “illness” (pathos). The justification for pathologizing this state is not only that it is “unreasonable” or “unnatural,” which some might contest, but also—and more importantly from a hedonistic perspective—that it is uncomfortable: its symptoms include stress (suntetatai) and insomnia (agrupnei). Another Aristippean saying makes a similar point: “It’s better to live by sleeping on straw but feeling confident than to have wealth but be strangled by your own thoughts” (Anecd. Gr. ed. Boissonade I p. 36.18–21 = SSR 4a.77). Aristippus’s philosophy aims to equip its practitioners with the beliefs and attitudes they need in order to be “cured” of their attachment to superfluities, and thus to be freed from their stress, insomnia, and the stranglehold of their own preoccupations.

Aristippean temperance also has a positive aspect. It not only eliminates mental “illness,” it also enables enjoyment. Once again there are numerous anecdotes testifying to this function. The most popular concerns an incident in the court of the tyrant Dionysius in Syracuse:

Once when they were drinking and Dionysius ordered everyone to put on purple robes and dance, Plato refused. “I couldn’t put on women’s clothing,” he said. But Aristippus took the robes and when he was about to dance he gracefully replied, “even in Bacchic celebrations, if a lady is sound of mind [sōphrōn], she won’t be corrupted.” (D.L. 2.78)

Here Plato is quoting the verses of Pentheus, the doomed protagonist in Euripides’ Bacchae (line 836). Aristippus, by contrast, is quoting the verses of the blind prophet Tiresias, who always perceives the truth that tragic protagonists stubbornly refuse to see (lines 317–18). The moral is obviously that whoever has a truly sound mind can indulge in beautiful clothes, dancing, and bodily pleasure without “being corrupted”—in other words, without beginning to feel that those things are necessary. Such a person will not forget that what really matters is simply to avoid pain and distress and experience some sort of pleasure. The source of that pleasure is unimportant, as a key passage testifies: “[Aristippus] enjoyed the pleasure of what was present, and didn’t hunt painfully after the enjoyment of what was not present” (D.L. 2.66). This is why Aristippus can walk away from any particular source of pleasure without even a twinge of regret, as he sometimes demonstrates very conspicuously:

Once Dionysius ordered [Aristippus] to choose one of three courte- sans. Aristippus led away all three, saying, “It didn’t do Paris any good to choose just one!” But they say that after he led them away, when he got as far as the gate he dismissed them. That’s how strong he was in both choosing and disdaining. (D.L. 2.67; cf. Athen. 544d, Socratic Epistle 9.1 = SSR 4a.86, 96, 222)

Aristippus can send away the courtesans because he knows that his night will be none the worse for it. Of course, having sex with three women would be pleasant and therefore choiceworthy. But a display of wit and magnanimity will impress Dionysius and thus secure future enjoyment. And for anyone with an understanding of what is really good and bad, three courtesans are excessive: one sexual partner, or even an alternative source of bodily pleasure, is just as good. This insight provides Aristippus with both the tranquility and the self-mastery to which every ancient Greek sage aspires. It is encapsulated in what may be Aristippus’s most famous saying, which refers to his relationship with the renowned courtesan Laïs: “I have, but I am not had” (SSR 4a.95–96). In other words, he knows what he wants from this relationship, which is simply pleasure. Unlike so many others, he has not become infatuated with this renowned courtesan; she has no hold over him.

Aristippus’s particular interpretation of temperance dovetails with another of his virtues, which is mastery of interpersonal relations. For ease of reference I shall refer to this as “sociability.” Aristippus’s concern with sociability emerges from the way he reportedly characterizes the product of his understanding and training: “When he was asked what he got out of his philosophy, he said, ‘The ability to associate confidently with all people [pasi tharrountōs homilein]” (D.L. 2.68).17 This saying suggests at least two aspects to Aristippean sociability: first, he can get along with any sort of person whatsoever; second, he can do so without anxiety. It is possible to reconstruct links between both of these and Aristippean temperance. First, because Aristippus understands both cognitively and emotionally that all he really needs is to avoid pain and discover some modicum of pleasure, he feels more relaxed around people. He does not need to impress anyone, since he is not after wealth or political advancement. This is why he feels confident. Second, knowing that just about every situation presents opportunities for enjoyment encourages him simply to accommodate himself to his company at any given moment: “He was able to adapt himself to every place and time and role and to act harmoniously in every circumstance” (D.L. 2.51). This responsiveness could help him to get along with others.

Of course, responsiveness requires versatility and adroitness. That Aristippean sociability encompasses these capacities is corroborated by other sayings and anecdotes. For example, “When he was asked how a wise man differs from someone who is not wise, he said, ‘Send them both naked among strangers, and you’ll find out’” (D.L. 2.73). The point is not merely that the wise man will be feel comfortable, but also that he will be adroit enough to turn the situation to his advantage. A popular story illustrates this:

The Socratic philosopher Aristippus was shipwrecked and thrown onto the shore of Rhodes. When he saw geometrical figures drawn there, he reportedly said to his companions, “Cheer up! I see signs of humans,” and right away he hurried to the citadel of Rhodes and went straight to the gymnasium. There he was rewarded with gifts for his philosophical disputations, so that he not only equipped himself, he also provided clothes and food for those who were with him. When his companions wanted to return to their country and asked him what news he wanted sent home, he told them to say, “The kind of possessions and traveling provisions free men ought to acquire are those which can swim away from a ship-wreck with them.” (Vitruvius, De Arch. 6.1.1)

This anecdote actually brings together adroitness, confidence, and temperance. Aristippus’s adroitness is displayed through his ability to impress the Rhodians with his dazzling wit and wisdom. This adroitness is part of what gives him confidence. (In fact, the word “confidence” appears explicitly in Galen’s Greek version: “He became confident [etharrēse] when he saw a geometric drawing in the sand” [Protr. 5].) And the lesson of the entire anecdote, which Aristippus explicitly communicates to “the folks back home” (nominally the Cyreneans, but more importantly us who have not yet completed his philosophical “journey”), is about temperance. In the journey of life, we should only carry the kind and quantity of provisions that could swim away from a shipwreck along with us. Of course, Aristippus has in mind his own philosophical wisdom, which swims as well as he does. That is why a naked sage has everything he needs to flourish among strangers.

These intellectual and ethical virtues lead Aristippus to value both himself and his life as a whole, as a final anecdote attests:

Once when [Aristippus] was sailing to Corinth and was caught in a storm it happened that he became upset. Someone said, “We common people weren’t afraid, but you philosophers acted like cowards!” “Well,” he answered, “we aren’t contending for the same kind of soul!” (D.L. 2.71)

Aristippus has a lot more to lose than his fellow passengers, because his soul is the repository of his knowledge and capacities. There is an almost heroic grandiloquence in his statement that his soul is not of the same kind as that of his fellow passengers (ou . . . homoias psuchēs). In his version of the anecdote, Aulus Gellius brings this out in a slightly different way: “he replied that of course the other hadn’t been terribly worried about the soul of a totally worthless loser [nequissimi nebulonis], but he was afraid for the soul of Aristippus!” (Noct. Att. 19.1.1 = SSR 4a.49).

Aristippus is set apart from the class to which this uppity but ignorant critic belongs. And as Odysseus reasserts his status by beating Thersites with his scepter, Aristippus reasserts his with a put-down witty enough to be remembered throughout antiquity.

It may seem audacious to compare Aristippus with Odysseus, but we will see below that this comparison occurs more than once in our ancient evidence ([Plut.] Vit. Hom. 2.150 = SSR 4a.55, D.L. 2.79–80 [twice]). Moreover, the shipwreck anecdote we have just encountered recalls Odysseus’s shipwreck on Phaeacia, just as the overwhelming impression Aristippus makes on the Rhodians recalls Odysseus’s impression on the Phaeacians (whose young men he defeats in athletic competition, and whose king offers him the princess’s hand in marriage [Od. 7–8]). More generally, heroic posturing is a common element in Greek philosophizing. As Hobbs has convincingly shown, Plato’s dialogues contain an extended rumination on the allure and psychology of Homeric heroes and an attempt to represent philosophers like Socrates as alternative role models. Heroic motifs are also scattered throughout many Stoic and Epicurean texts, although no one, to my knowledge, has explored these in detail.

The aim of this section has been to explore how the objects of Aristippus’s care and pursuit extend beyond moments of pleasure and pain to comprehend an entire life. The primary concerns which knit together his life are education and the virtues at which it aims. I have not insisted that Aristippean virtues are valued purely as instruments for the generation of pleasure and avoidance of pain, since our evidence does not encourage doctrinal reconstructions, and besides Aristippus may not have favored systematic articulation. But such evidence as we possess suggests that Aristippus tends to view virtues as instrumental goods. It is therefore worth concluding by looking at a third version of the storm-at-sea anecdote. According to Aelian, Aristippus’s response to his fellow sailor is, “Naturally [I was afraid]! After all, your concern and risk just now involved an unhappy life, but mine involved a happy one” (VH 9.20). In this response what Aristippus values is neither his own heroic superiority nor the virtues contained in his soul. Rather, it is now explicit that Aristippus values those virtues for the sake of the happy life (biou . . . eudaimonos) which they will permit him to live in the years to come. Whether or not this wording goes back to Aristippus—and it probably does not—it is entirely plausible that the reason Aristippus prizes the virtues of temperance and sociability is indeed because they support a pleasant life.

Sources: 

Lampe, K. (2017). The Birth of Hedonism - The Cyrenaic Philosophers and Pleasure As a Way of Life. Princeton University Press.

Kurt Lampe’s “Aristippean Hedonism” from THE BIRTH OF HEDONISM

Here I present Kurt Lampe’s section on Aristippean Hedonism from chapter 3 of his excellent book The Birth of Hedonism, lightly edited, with select content underlined for emphasis and ease of reference.

Aristippean Hedonism:

It is clear from all of our ancient sources that Aristippus enjoys and is inclined to pursue bodily pleasure, freedom from bodily pain, and peace of mind. In Memorabilia 2.1, Aristippus’s contemporary Xenophon depicts an extended conversation between him and Socrates. He introduces the conversation as follows:

Socrates’ way of speaking about this sort of thing also seemed to me to encourage his companions to exercise self-control in their desire for food, drink, sex, cold, heat and work. For example, when he noticed that one of his companions was rather self-indulgent concerning these things, he said, “Tell me, Aristippus . . .” (2.1.1 = SSR 4a.163)

A series of arguments follows, in which Socrates tries to show Aristippus that he will live better if he exercises moderation in his pleasure-taking and voluntarily exposes himself to pain. For example, Socrates argues that the sort of person destined to rule needs training in self-restraint and endurance, so that he can concentrate on the complex tasks leadership involves. He asks Aristippus whether he assigns himself to the rulers or the ruled. Aristippus agrees that ruling requires this sort of training, and therefore indicates that he does not assign himself to the class of would-be rulers. Rather, he says, “I assign myself to those who want to live as easily and pleasantly as possible” (2.1.9). By “living easily and pleasantly” Aristippus presumably has in mind the sorts of things Socrates has just said a ruler must forego, such as “gratifying the belly” (2.1.2), and avoiding the sorts of things Socrates has just said the ruler must practice, such as “being able to refrain [from drinking] when thirsty” (2.1.2), “being able to go to sleep late and get up early and stay awake,” “being in control of sexual appetites,” “willingly enduring hard work,” and “learning whatever is necessary in order to prevail over your opponents” (2.1.3). These are Socrates’ examples, not those of Aristippus. Moreover, Xenophon appears to be a hostile source. Nevertheless, the rest of our evidence confirms the positive value Aristippus places on bodily gratification and the negative value he places on bodily and mental disturbance.

In fact many of our sources go further, and suggest that Aristippus not only values eating, drinking, having sex, and avoiding hard work, but indeed prefers to do so in style. Another relatively early source, the Pyrrhonean skeptic Timon (ca. 310–220 BCE), speaks of “the voluptuous nature [trupherē phusis] of Aristippus, groping after falsehoods” (D.L. 2.66). This is an excerpt from Timon’s Silloi, which is a far-ranging satire of dogmatic philosophers. It therefore suggests that Timon believes Aristippus is at the least strongly committed to pleasure, and perhaps even inclined toward “voluptuousness” or “luxury” (truphē)—in other words, toward the cultivation of appetite and the refinement of its satisfactions. Dozens of later anecdotes fill out our picture of what this voluptuousness involves: some concern Aristippus’s enjoyment of scented oil and fine garments, while many others pertain to his association with expensive courtesans. Two of the lost (and probably spurious) works attributed to him nicely encapsulate this penchant for luxury: Toward Those Who Blame Him for Having Vintage Wine and Courtesans, and Toward Those Who Blame Him for Being Extravagant in His Expenditure on Fish (D.L. 2.84). The latter may have been concocted out of anecdotes like the following:

When someone was criticizing him for his extravagant expenditure on fish, he asked, “Wouldn’t you have bought this for three obols?” When the other agreed, he said, “So I’m not over-fond of fish, you’re just over-fond of money!” (D.L. 2.75)

It was also said that Aristippus’s primary reason for visiting the tyrant Dionysius in Sicily was to enjoy the luxuries he could provide. In one anecdote, for example, Aristippus has to explain why he endures being spit on by the tyrant. “‘Well,’ he said, ‘fishermen endure getting wet with sea water in order to catch a gudgeon. Shouldn’t I endure getting wet with wine in order to catch a tuna?” (D.L. 2.67; cf. 2.73, 2.80, Athen. 544c–d = SSR 4a.36). None of these anecdotes are reliable on their own or in their specifics, but in the aggregate they paint a consistent picture of someone who enjoys and values refined pleasures.

However, Aristippus clearly balances this taste for refinement with the need to retain his peace of mind. To put it another way, he not only values bodily pleasure and its refined variations, he also values freedom from mental distress. This is why he is careful not to become attached to any particular source of bodily pleasure. Diogenes Laertius puts this most clearly:

Aristippus was able to harmonize himself with his place, time, and role and perform harmoniously in any circumstance. For this reason he was more in favor with Dionysius than the others, because he always made good use of whatever happened. For he enjoyed the pleasure of whatever was present, and didn’t hunt painfully for the enjoyment of what wasn’t present. (2.66)

In other words, Aristippus does not value any particular pleasure so much that he would trouble himself if it were not available. That would be counterproductive: the distress of “hunting painfully” for fine garments, perfume, or some particular courtesan would more than counterbalance whatever enjoyment they could yield. I want to emphasize that it implies that the stress and anxiety of a mind filled by unruly desires are significant evils for Aristippus. While one of the goals of his philosophy is to clarify the goodness of pleasure and ensure its regular supply, another is to eliminate mental uneasiness.

A family of sayings and anecdotes testifies to this function. For example, according to Bion of Borysthenes (ca. 325–250 BCE), who himself studied with the Cyrenaic Theodorus, “When his attendant was carrying his silver on the road and was struggling with the weight, Aristippus said, ‘Pour off the excess and carry what you can’” (D.L. 2.77). The moral is clearly that neither money nor what money can buy has any hold on Aristippus’s mind. He is able to shed anxieties like his slave sheds that onerous silver. Another set of anecdotes shows how easily he loses real estate, while others display his concern to use speech in order to dispel anger and distress. Finally, many sources testify that “confidence” (tharrein or tharsos) is a product of his philosophy that he particularly values. In practice this means feeling comfortable rather than anxious or fearful in unknown or threatening situations.

All of this suggests that Aristippus tends to perceive the world in terms of opportunities for enjoyment and risks of suffering pain or distress. Moreover, it suggests that he has begun to articulate this existential attitude in a series of evaluative arguments: he consistently argues that actions, experiences, and conditions are laudable or choiceworthy because they are associated with pleasure, and merit avoidance because they are associated with pain or distress. But this does not yet amount to a clear set of doctrines. This may be due to the state of the evidence, but it may also be due to the nature of Aristippean thought. Like his fellow Socratics Xenophon and (arguably) Plato and Aeschines of Sphettus, Aristippus may not have articulated any complete and coherent system.

It is worth expanding briefly on the comparison with Xenophon, since modern philosophers may feel that the “arguments themselves” should have driven Aristippus to stabilize his hedonism with clear axiomatic foundations. Xenophon’s works obviously recur to the same themes and values, but they neither present these values as foundational doctrines nor rigorously ground their thematic discussions in them. The values emerge from numerous passages across Xenophon’s works. For example, in Memorabilia 1.6.3 the sophist Antiphon accuses Socrates of being a “teacher of unhappiness.” In reply Socrates defends the merits  of the lifestyle generated by his philosophizing: (a) he is free to choose whom he teaches, because he does not take payment; (b) he enjoys bodily satisfactions more, and feels bodily pains less, because of his moderation and endurance training; (c) he enjoys the delight of knowing he is becoming a better man; (d) his bodily and mental conditioning make him capable of helping his friends and his polis; (e) he is as self-sufficient as a human can be; (f) and because he is self-sufficient, he is as divine as a human being can be (1.6.4–10). This defense implies a set of goods that are operative throughout Xenophon’s Socratic works: freedom from constraint (a), pleasure and freedom from pain (b, c), virtue and goodness (c), helping your friends and your polis (d), self-sufficiency (e), and godlikeness (f). Elsewhere Xenophon’s Socrates also values self-knowledge and knowledge of ethical and political concepts (e.g., Mem. 1.1.16, 4.2.24–40, 4.6.1). But the Memorabilia show little interest in molding these values into a clearly articulated system. As they wend their way through themes as diverse as the need for self-control, how to attract friends, how to make an armored breastplate, and the nature of dialectic, they draw opportunistically on these values in order to display Socrates’ happiness and his tendency to make his companions happier. There is no evidence that Aeschines of Sphettus, substantial fragments of whose dialogues survive, proceeds more systematically. For these contemporaries of Aristippus and fellow students of Socrates, critical reflection upon ethics does not entail establishing clear axiomatic foundations.

It may therefore be true in a sense that Aristippus is not a hedonist, if by “hedonist” we mean someone who unambiguously defines pleasure as the highest good, or the only intrinsic good, or the end of all deliberation and action. But he is certainly a hedonist in the sense that pleasure is central to both his lifestyle and many of his ethical arguments. We can elaborate and corroborate this subtle distinction by reference to an unusually good piece of Cyrenaic doxography:

Aristippus was a companion of Socrates, and set up the so-called Cyrenaic school of thought, from which Epicurus took the starting points for his exposition of the end. Aristippus was an entirely lush-liver, a real pleasure-lover, but he himself didn’t speak openly about the end. Implicitly, however, he said that the essence of happiness lies in pleasures, since he was always talking about pleasure, and this led those who came to him to suspect he was saying the end was to live pleasantly. (Eus. PE 14.18.31 = SSR 4a.173)

Eusebius is a reliable source. Moreover, his assertion that Aristippus implicitly said that happiness lies in pleasures is entirely consistent with all the evidence we have just seen. And he is surely right to say that Aristippus did not speak openly about the end, since “the end” (to telos) only became a regular feature of philosophical ethics after Aristippus’s death. Just as important as this negative stipulation, however, is his positive characterization of Aristippean ethics as something expressed in the combination of his lifestyle and his characteristic topics of conversation. Whereas his followers felt an impulse to identify a clear doctrine about the end, Aristippus “was an entirely lush-liver, a real pleasure lover” and was “always speaking about pleasure.” Eusebius seems to be saying that Aristippus’s lifestyle and conversational themes were all his followers had to go on. He did not subordinate his behavior or arguments to any clearly formulated, foundational doctrines. Nevertheless, that behavior and those arguments made it clear that he took pleasure and the avoidance of pain to be important points of reference for his decisions, aspirations, and inquiries.

Most of the evidence I have surveyed in this section is imprecise and fourth- or fifth-hand. It is therefore best to be diffident about the extent to which Aristippus elaborated any fixed doctrines. But the clearest testimony we have suggests that he left theoretical systematizing to his successors. His own hedonism gained enough stability from its consistent application to his behavior and from its oral presentation in polemics or instruction. As the study of ethics became increasingly specialized over the ensuing century, however, his followers would feel the pressure to stabilize their position with firmer foundational positions and arguments

Sources: 

Lampe, K. (2017). The Birth of Hedonism - The Cyrenaic Philosophers and Pleasure As a Way of Life. Princeton University Press.

The Foundations of Pleasure

Cyrenaic philosophy is often presented as stressing the value of momentary pleasures while disregarding virtuous character traits, peace of mind, and long-range flourishing. Fortunately for the modern Cyrenaic, this simplified popular understanding is incorrect. Both the Aristippean doxography and remaining Cyrenaic material suggest concerns beyond immediate delights, though these sweet moments are certainly most important. The New Cyrenaicism of Walter Pater further develops enduring themes, adapting the ancient hedonic philosophy to broader pleasures, particularly a refined aesthetic appreciation. 

How should we approach these additional concerns? Rather than understanding any of these factors as the end in themselves, we should rather consider them partial constituents of the pleasant life, each of which enables one to pursue and enjoy positive experiences to the fullest extent, those pleasures being our proper telos. Error enters when we confuse means with ends. Competing ethical standards are held out with seductive flair, tantalizing audiences with high-sounding notions of an allegedly superior attainment. Whether it be the strenuous adherence to Stoic virtue, or ascetic Buddhist enlightenment, or indifferent Pyrrhonic ataraxia, each promises a “noble” vision of the good life devoid of present joyful content. Eudaemonists are not created equal. You must ask yourself what flourishing really means, searching yourself for direct feelings of true happiness, accepting no substitute. We may consider a severe historical or social context wherein the achievement of austere serenity is the highest blessing one can reasonably hope after. Perhaps life is largely dismal, and psychological detachment, limited desire for humble necessities, shared with a supportive community, our only defense. I submit that the majority of modern humans can dream a little larger, and Cyrenaicism, the sunniest of Ancient Greek attitudes, is most appropriate for prosperous times.

On that note, let’s return to the correct understanding:

• Virtue is an invaluable instrumental good, our greatest assurance both of procuring future enjoyable experiences, and appreciating them to the highest degree when they arrive. Aristippean paideia, the philosophical education for which he famously charged fees, consisted primarily of teaching students social mastery, the right understanding of value, the idiosyncratic Cyrenaic virtue of sophrosunē (soundness of mind), and training self-possession. The evident esteem in which Aristippus held these enduring character traits is made clear in an anecdote wherein he provides for himself and his compatriots, after washing ashore from a capsized vessel, by entertaining civilized men with his rhetorical, social, and philosophical skills. Upon the departure of the men he sailed in with, they request some parting advice, which he provides as follows: “children ought to be provided with property and resources of a kind that could swim with them even out of a shipwreck.” (Redmond, 2012).
• Peace of mind is a necessary element both for avoiding anxiety and distress, and for savouring unmixed happiness. Once we understand how little is strictly necessary for our enjoyment - just the avoidance of pain and some modicum of pleasure - we become far more calm and confident. Consequently, we disdain excess, and, paraphrasing the words of Horace, aim higher while remaining mostly content with what we have. Kurt Lampe elaborates further: “Aristippus does not value any particular pleasure so much that he would trouble himself if it were not available. That would be counterproductive: the distress of “hunting painfully” for fine garments, perfume, or some particular courtesan would more than counterbalance whatever enjoyment they could yield…[the] stress and anxiety of a mind filled by unruly desires are significant evils for Aristippus. While one of the goals of his philosophy is to clarify the goodness of pleasure and ensure its regular supply, another is to eliminate mental uneasiness.” (2017). When we already have everything required for a pleasant life, though there’s nothing wrong with working for more, if this striving inhibits present enjoyment, we are harboring an illness which is undercutting the entire project.
• Our long-term wellbeing is both cause and consequence of living a fulfilling and satisfying life, as pleasant feelings, when we properly understand their physical origin, are the result of meeting our biological and psychological requirements. It’s worth mentioning that Aristippean presentism is a spiritual exercise — a recommendation for focusing one’s attention and efforts on the present moment in order to savor its pleasures all the more — and not a rejection of future-planning or reflective gratitude. While Cyrenaics do stress that anticipation of pleasures to come, or recollection of pleasures gone by, are not of equal value to current experiences, there is no suggestion that we blindly occupy an ever-vanishing point of space-time, living as bi-pedal goldfish. The assurance that what we really need is easy to acquire, and that we can reasonably expect to achieve it, provides us with confidence and security. Unlike the Stoics, we can admit that life sometimes gets in the way even for the most well-equipped of us, and no matter what, there are going to be times where we experience sorrow and suffering. These are, however, not the essence of existence, and for the most part, our days are passed blissfully. 

I hope this brief post indicates a more reasonable understanding of the Cyrenaic ethical project, one which is far better supported by the remaining evidence and Aristippus’ personal example. Anybody who is interested in exploring these topics in greater detail is encouraged to consult Kurt Lampe’s excellent scholarship, particularly Chapter 4 of The Birth of Hedonism.

Sources: 

Lampe, K. (2017). The Birth of Hedonism - The Cyrenaic Philosophers and Pleasure As a Way of Life. Princeton University Press.

Redmond, F. (2012). Cyreniacs Handbook. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Walter Pater’s Aristippean Excerpts from MARIUS: THE EPICUREAN

After paving the way with a description of Heraclitean metaphysics, which circumscribes the interests of our proto-Cyrenaic inquiry, Walter Pater turns to the sentimental evaluation of this outlook, interpreting the hedonistic philosophy of Aristippus as the result of reconciliatory efforts, made according to an indwelling pleasure-seeking attitude confronting a melting universe. These excerpts follow from the selection in the previous post from the same novel. I now present them:

From Marius: The Epicurean:

Aristippus of Cyrene too had left off in suspense of judgment as to what might really lie behind — flammantia moenia mundi: the flaming ramparts of the world. Those strange, bold, sceptical surmises, which had haunted the minds of the first Greek enquirers as merely abstract doubt, which had been present to the mind of Heraclitus as one element only in a system of abstract philosophy, became with Aristippus a very subtly practical worldly-wisdom. The difference between him and those obscure earlier thinkers is almost like that between an ancient thinker generally, and a modern man of the world: it was the difference between the mystic in his cell, or the prophet in the desert, and the expert, cosmopolitan, administrator of his dark sayings, translating the abstract thoughts of the master into terms, first of all, of sentiment. It has been sometimes seen, in the history of the human mind, that when thus translated into terms of sentiment — of sentiment, as lying already half-way towards practice — the abstract ideas of metaphysics for the first time reveal their true significance. The metaphysical principle, in itself, as it were, without hands or feet, becomes impressive, fascinating, of effect, when translated into a precept as to how it were best to feel and act; in other words, under its sentimental or ethical equivalent. The leading idea of the great master of Cyrene, his theory that things are but shadows, and that we, even as they, never continue in one stay, might indeed have taken effect as a languid, enervating, consumptive nihilism, as a precept of “renunciation,” which would touch and handle and busy itself with nothing. But in the reception of  metaphysical formulae, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall — the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought; there being at least so much truth as this involved in the theological maxim, that the reception of this or that speculative conclusion is really a matter of will. The persuasion that all is vanity, with this happily constituted Greek, who had been a genuine disciple of Socrates and reflected, presumably, something of his blitheness in the face of the world, his happy way of taking all chances, generated neither frivolity nor sourness, but induced, rather, an impression, just serious enough, of the call upon men’s attention of the crisis in which they find themselves. It became the stimulus towards every kind of activity, and prompted a perpetual, inextinguishable thirst after experience. 

With Marius, then, the influence of the philosopher of pleasure depended on this, that in him an abstract doctrine, originally somewhat acrid, had fallen upon a rich and genial nature, well fitted to transform it into a theory of practice, of considerable stimulative power towards a fair life. What Marius saw in him was the spectacle of one of the happiest temperaments coming, so to speak, to an understanding with the most depressing of theories; accepting the results of a metaphysical system which seemed to concentrate into itself all the weakening trains of thought in earlier Greek speculation, and making the best of it; turning its hard, bare truths, with wonderful tact, into precepts of grace, and delicate wisdom, and a delicate sense of honour. Given the hardest terms, supposing our days are indeed but a shadow, even so, we may well adorn and beautify, in scrupulous self-respect, our souls, and whatever our souls touch upon — these wonderful bodies, these material dwelling-places through which the shadows pass together for a while, the very raiment we wear, our very pastimes and the intercourse of society. The most discerning judges saw in him something like the graceful “humanities” of the later Roman, and our modern “culture,” as it is termed; while Horace recalled his sayings as expressing best his own consummate amenity in the reception of life. In this way, for Marius, under the guidance of that old master of decorous living, those eternal doubts as to the criteria of truth reduced themselves to a scepticism almost drily practical, a scepticism which developed the opposition between things as they are and our impressions and thoughts concerning them — the possibility, if an outward world does really exist, of some faultiness in our apprehension of it — the doctrine, in short, of what is termed “the subjectivity of knowledge.” That is a consideration, indeed,  which lies as an element of weakness, like some admitted fault or flaw, at the very foundation of every philosophical account of the universe; which confronts all philosophies at their starting, but with which none have really dealt conclusively, some perhaps not quite sincerely; which those who are not philosophers dissipate by “common,” but unphilosophical, sense, or by religious faith. 

The peculiar strength of Marius was, to have apprehended this weakness on the threshold of human knowledge, in the whole range of its consequences. Our knowledge is limited to what we feel, he reflected: we need no proof that we feel. But can we be sure that things are at all like our feelings? Mere peculiarities in the instruments of our cognition, like the little knots and waves on the surface of a mirror, may distort the matter they seem but to represent. Of other people we cannot truly know even the feelings, nor how far they would indicate the same modifications, each one of a personality really unique, in using the same terms as ourselves; that “common experience,” which is sometimes proposed as a satisfactory basis of certainty, being after all only a fixity of language. But our own impressions! — The light and heat of that blue veil over our heads, the heavens spread out, perhaps not like a curtain over anything! — How reassuring, after so long a debate about the rival criteria of truth, to fall back upon direct sensation, to limit one’s aspirations after knowledge to that! In an age still materially so brilliant, so expert in the artistic handling of material things, with sensible capacities still in undiminished vigour, with the whole world of classic art and poetry outspread before it, and where there was more than eye or ear could well take in — how natural the determination to rely exclusively upon the phenomena of the senses, which certainly never deceive us about themselves, about which alone we can never deceive ourselves! 

And so the abstract apprehension that the little point of this present moment alone really is, between a past which has just ceased to be and a future which may never come, became practical with Marius, under the form of a resolve, as far as possible, to exclude regret and desire, and yield himself to the improvement of the present with an absolutely disengaged mind. America is here and now — here, or nowhere: as Wilhelm Meister finds out one day, just not too late, after so long looking vaguely across the ocean for the opportunity of the development of his capacities. It was as if, recognising in perpetual motion the law of nature, Marius identified his own way of life cordially with it, “throwing himself into the stream,” so to speak. He too must maintain a harmony with that soul of motion in things, by constantly renewed mobility of character. Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res. — Thus Horace had summed up that perfect manner in the reception of life attained by his old Cyrenaic master; and the first practical consequence of the metaphysic which lay behind that perfect manner, had been a strict limitation, almost the renunciation, of metaphysical enquiry itself. Metaphysic — that art, as it has so often proved, in the words of Michelet, de s’égarer avec méthode, of bewildering oneself methodically: — one must spend little time upon that! In the school of Cyrene, great as was its mental incisiveness, logical and physical speculation, theoretic interests generally, had been valued only so far as they served to give a groundwork, an intellectual justification, to that exclusive concern with practical ethics which was a note of the Cyrenaic philosophy. How earnest and enthusiastic, how true to itself, under how many varieties of character, had been the effort of the Greeks after Theory — Theôria — that vision of a wholly reasonable world, which, according to the greatest of them, literally makes man like God: how loyally they had still persisted in the quest after that, in spite of how many disappointments! In the Gospel of Saint John, perhaps, some of them might have found the kind of vision they were seeking for; but not in “doubtful disputations” concerning “being” and “not being,” knowledge and appearance. Men’s minds, even young men’s minds, at that late day, might well seem oppressed by the weariness of systems which had so far outrun positive knowledge; and in the mind of Marius, as in that old school of Cyrene, this sense of ennui, combined with appetites so youthfully vigorous, brought about reaction, a sort of suicide (instances of the like have been seen since) by which a great metaphysical acumen was devoted to the function of proving metaphysical speculation impossible, or useless. Abstract theory was to be valued only just so far as it might serve to clear the tablet of the mind from suppositions no more than half realisable, or wholly visionary, leaving it in flawless evenness of surface to the impressions of an experience, concrete and direct. 

To be absolutely virgin towards such experience, by ridding ourselves of such abstractions as are but the ghosts of bygone impressions — to be rid of the notions we have made for ourselves, and that so often only misrepresent the experience of which they profess to be the representation — idola, idols, false appearances, as Bacon calls them later — to neutralise the distorting influence of metaphysical system by an all-accomplished metaphysic skill: it is this bold, hard, sober recognition, under a very “dry light,” of its own proper aim, in union with a habit of feeling which on the practical side may perhaps open a wide doorway to human weakness, that gives to the Cyrenaic doctrine, to reproductions of this doctrine in the time of Marius or in our own, their gravity and importance. It was a school to which the young man might come, eager for truth, expecting much from philosophy, in no ignoble curiosity, aspiring after nothing less than an “initiation.” He would be sent back, sooner or later, to experience, to the world of concrete impressions, to things as they may be seen, heard, felt by him; but with a wonderful machinery of observation, and free from the tyranny of mere theories. 

So, in intervals of repose, after the agitation which followed the death of Flavian, the thoughts of Marius ran, while he felt himself as if returned to the fine, clear, peaceful light of that pleasant school of healthfully sensuous wisdom, in the brilliant old Greek colony, on its fresh upland by the sea. Not pleasure, but a general completeness of life, was the practical ideal to which this anti-metaphysical metaphysic really pointed. And towards such a full or complete life, a life of various yet select sensation, the most direct and effective auxiliary must be, in a word, Insight. Liberty of soul, freedom from all partial and misrepresentative doctrine which does but relieve one element in our experience at the cost of another, freedom from all embarrassment alike of regret for the past and of calculation on the future: this would be but preliminary to the real business of education — insight, insight through culture, into all that the present moment holds in trust for us, as we stand so briefly in its presence. From that maxim of Life as the end of life, followed, as a practical consequence, the desirableness of refining all the instruments of inward and outward intuition, of developing all their capacities, of testing and exercising one’s self in them, till one’s whole nature became one complex medium of reception, towards the vision — the “beatific vision,” if we really cared to make it such — of our actual experience in the world. Not the conveyance of an abstract body of truths or principles, would be the aim of the right education of one’s self, or of another, but the conveyance of an art — an art in some degree peculiar to each individual character; with the modifications, that is, due to its special constitution, and the peculiar circumstances of its growth, inasmuch as no one of us is “like another, all in all.”

…

Pater, W. (1973). Marius the Epicurean / 1. Blackwell.

Walter Pater’s Heraclitean Excerpts from PLATO AND PLATONISM

Continuing on from my last post, which contained quotes from Walter Pater’s novel Marius: The Epicurean, illustrating the debt owed to Heraclitus for our aesthetic hedonism, I now present relevant selections from another work, Plato and Platonism. More evident in this case is an appreciation for the other side of Heraclitus’ flux theory, that is, the emphasis on natural laws harmoniously governing the perpetual motion of material and mental phenomena alike, the so-called “logos”. The healthy sceptical reticence to reify ontologically totalising and ossifying abstractions prohibits Pater’s protagonist, at this stage, from fully embracing Heraclitus’ universe, and rightly so, for in the religious sentiments with which he describes our cosmos, and in its pantheistic orchestration, he cannot assent. It awaits a later development in his journey to permit Marius’ contemplation of a demiurgic cosmic regulator. Nevertheless, G.T.W. Patrick makes the excellent case that, properly understood, Heraclitus’ appeals to immanent reason, and his invocation of Zeus, are the Ephesian’s nearest experiential and cultural equivalents for communicating a revolutionary idea, far beyond the grammar of his time: universal regularity. On the precise meaning of the logos, Patrick writes:

We have found ample reason for rejecting the notion that it was of a logical nature, or any objectification of that which is inherent in human thought. Yet it was not without human attributes. As fiery essence, it was identified with the universe and became almost material. As Order, it approached the idea of pure mathematical Relation or Form (cp. frag. 23, and Zeller, Vol. 1, p. 628, 3, and 620). As Wisdom, it was pictured as the intelligent power or efficient force that produces the Order. When we reflect what difficulty even at the present day we find in answering the simple question, What is Order? we are less surprised to find that the Ephesian philosopher did not always distinguish it from less difficult conceptions. (Patrick, 2015). 

Exploring in greater depth the philosophy of Heraclitus is, I think, key to further developing New Cyrenaicism, beyond the somewhat limited scope of the orthodox school and Aristippus’ immediate concerns, and even beyond what Pater himself explicitly recognised, though in accordance with the sentiments touched upon towards the end of his novel. Nevertheless, in keeping with our key epistemic principles and axiological commitments, we must pull short of a full-throated endorsement of Heracliteanism and critically engage with the material. On that note, I present the excerpts.

From Plato and Platonism:

Philosophy itself, mental and moral, has its preparation, its forethoughts, in the poetry that preceded it. A powerful generalisation thrown into some salient phrase, such as that of Heraclitus—“Πάντα ῥεῖ,” all things fleet away—may startle a particular age by its novelty, but takes possession only because all along its root was somewhere among the natural though but half-developed instincts of the human mind itself.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in Plato, in spite of his wonderful savour of literary freshness, there is nothing absolutely new: or rather, as in many other very original products of human genius, the seemingly new is old also, a palimpsest, a tapestry of which the actual threads have served before, or like the animal frame itself, every particle of which has already lived and died many times over.

Heraclitus, a writer of philosophy in prose, yet of a philosophy which was half poetic figure, half generalised fact, in style crabbed and obscure, but stimulant, invasive, not to be forgotten—he too might be thought, as a writer of prose, one of the “fathers” of Plato. His influence, however, on Plato, though himself a Heraclitean in early life, was by way of antagonism or reaction; Plato’s stand against any philosophy of motion becoming, as we say, something of a “fixed idea” with him. Heraclitus of Ephesus (what Ephesus must have been just then is denoted by the fact that it was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League) died about forty years before Plato was born. Here then at Ephesus, the much frequented centre of the religious life of Ionia, itself so lately emancipated from its tyrants, Heraclitus, of ancient hereditary rank, an aristocrat by birth and temper, amid all the bustle of still undiscredited Greek democracy, had reflected, not to his peace of mind, on the mutable character of political as well as of physical existence; perhaps, early as it was, on the mutability of intellectual systems also, that modes of thought and practice had already been in and out of fashion. Empires certainly had lived and died around; and in Ephesus as elsewhere, the privileged class had gone to the wall. In this era of unrestrained youthfulness, of Greek youthfulness, one of the haughtiest of that class, as being also of nature’s aristocracy, and a man of powerful intellectual gifts, Heraclitus, asserts the native liberty of thought at all events; becomes, we might truly say, sickly with “the pale cast” of his philosophical questioning.

Amid the irreflective actors in that rapidly moving show, so entirely immersed in it superficial as it is that they have no feeling of themselves, he becomes self-conscious. He reflects; and his reflexion has the characteristic melancholy of youth when it is forced suddenly to bethink itself, and for a moment feels already old, feels the temperature of the world about it sensibly colder. Its very ingenuousness, its sincerity, will make the utterance of what comes to mind just then somewhat shrill or overemphatic.

Yet Heraclitus, thus superbly turning aside from the vulgar to think, so early in the impetuous spring-tide of Greek history, does but reflect after all the aspect of what actually surrounds him, when he cries out—his philosophy was no matter of formal treatise or system, but of harsh, protesting cries—Πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει. All things give way: nothing remaineth. There had been enquirers before him of another sort, purely physical enquirers, whose bold, contradictory, seemingly impious guesses how and of what primary elements the world of visible things, the sun, the stars, the brutes, their own souls and bodies, had been composed, were themselves a part of the bold enterprise of that romantic age; a series of intellectual adventures, of a piece with its adventures in unknown lands or upon the sea. The resultant intellectual chaos expressed the very spirit of gifted and sanguine but insubordinate youth (remember, that the word νεότης, youth, came to mean rashness, insolence!) questioning, deciding, rejecting, on mere rags and tatters of evidence, unbent to discipline, unmethodical, irresponsible. Those opinions too, coming and going, those conjectures as to what under-lay the sensible world, were themselves but fluid elements on the changing surface of existence.

Perpetual motion, alike in things and in men’s thoughts about them,—the sad, self-conscious, philosophy of Heraclitus, like one, knowing beyond his years, in this barely adolescent world which he is so eager to instruct, makes no pretence to be able to restrain that. Was not the very essence of thought itself also such perpetual motion? a baffling transition from the dead past, alive one moment since, to a present, itself deceased in turn ere we can say, It is here?

A keen analyst of the facts of nature and mind, a master presumably of all the knowledge that then there was, a vigorous definer of thoughts, he does but refer the superficial movement of all persons and things around him to deeper and still more masterful currents of universal change, stealthily withdrawing the apparently solid earth itself from beneath one’s feet. The principle of disintegration, the incoherency of fire or flood (for Heraclitus these are but very lively instances of movements, subtler yet more wasteful still) are inherent in the primary elements alike of matter and of the soul. Λέγει που Ἡράκλειτος, says Socrates in the Cratylus, ὅτι πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει. But the principle of lapse, of waste, was, in fact, in one’s self. “No one has ever passed twice over the same stream.” Nay, the passenger himself is without identity. Upon the same stream at the same moment we do, and do not, embark: for we are, and are not: εἶμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶμεν. And this rapid change, if it did not make all knowledge impossible, made it wholly relative, of a kind, that is to say, valueless in the judgment of Plato. Man, the individual, at this particular vanishing-point of time and place, becomes “the measure of all things.”

Yet from certain fragments in which the Logos is already named we may understand that there had been another side to the doctrine of Heraclitus; an attempt on his part, after all, to reduce that world of chaotic mutation to cosmos, to the unity of a reasonable order, by the search for and the notation, if there be such, of an antiphonal rhythm, or logic, which, proceeding uniformly from movement to movement, as in some intricate musical theme, might link together in one those contending, infinitely diverse impulses.

It was an act of recognition, even on the part of a philosophy of the inconsecutive, the incoherent, the insane, of that Wisdom which, “reacheth from end to end, sweetly and strongly ordering all things.” But if the “weeping philosopher,” the first of the pessimists, finds the ground of his melancholy in the sense of universal change, still more must he weep at the dulness of men’s ears to that continuous strain of melody throughout it. In truth, what was sympathetic with the hour and the scene in the Heraclitean doctrine, was the boldly aggressive, the paradoxical and negative tendency there, in natural collusion, as it was, with the destructiveness of undisciplined youth; that sense of rapid dissolution, which, according to one’s temperament and one’s luck in things, might extinguish, or kindle all the more eagerly, an interest in the mere phenomena of existence, of one’s so hasty passage through the world.

The theory of the perpetual flux was indeed an apprehension of which the full scope was only to be realised by a later age, in alliance with a larger knowledge of the natural world, a closer observation of the phenomena of mind, than was possible, even for Heraclitus, at that early day. So, the seeds of almost all scientific ideas might seem to have been dimly enfolded in the mind of antiquity; but fecundated, admitted to their full working prerogative, one by one, in after ages, by good favour of the special intellectual conditions belonging to a particular generation, which, on a sudden, finds itself preoccupied by a formula, not so much new, as renovated by new application.

It is in this way that the most modern metaphysical, and the most modern empirical philosophies alike have illustrated emphatically, justified, expanded, the divination (so we may make bold to call it under the new light now thrown upon it) of the ancient theorist of Ephesus. The entire modern theory of “development,” in all its various phases, proved or unprovable,—what is it but old Heracliteanism awake once more in a new world, and grown to full proportions?

Πάντα χωρεῖ, πάντα ῥεῖ—It is the burden of Hegel on the one hand, to whom nature, and art, and polity, and philosophy, aye, and religion too, each in its long historic series, are but so many conscious movements in the secular process of the eternal mind; and on the other hand of Darwin and Darwinism, for which “type” itself properly is not but is only always becoming. The bold paradox of Heraclitus is, in effect, repeated on all sides, as the vital persuasion just now of a cautiously reasoned experience, and, in illustration of the very law of change which it asserts, may itself presently be superseded as a commonplace.

Think of all that subtly disguised movement, latens processus, Bacon calls it (again as if by a kind of anticipation) which modern research has detected, measured, hopes to reduce to minuter or ally to still larger currents, in what had seemed most substantial to the naked eye, the inattentive mind. To the “observation and experiment” of the physical enquirer of to-day, the eye and the sun it lives by reveal themselves, after all, as Heraclitus had declared (scarcely serious, he seemed to those around him) as literally in constant extinction and renewal; the sun only going out more gradually than the human eye; the system meanwhile, of which it is the centre, in ceaseless movement nowhither. Our terrestrial planet is in constant increase by meteoric dust, moving to it through endless time out of infinite space. The Alps drift down the rivers into the plains, as still loftier mountains found their level there ages ago. The granite kernel of the earth, it is said, is ever changing in its very substance, its molecular constitution, by the passage through it of electric currents.

And the Darwinian theory—that “species,” the identifying forms of animal and vegetable life, immutable though they seem now, as of old in the Garden of Eden, are fashioned by slow development, while perhaps millions of years go by: well! every month is adding to its evidence. Nay, the idea of development (that, too, a thing of growth, developed in the progress of reflexion) is at last invading one by one, as the secret of their explanation, all the products of mind, the very mind itself, the abstract reason; our certainty, for instance, that two and two make four. Gradually we have come to think, or to feel, that primary certitude. Political constitutions, again, as we now see so clearly, are “not made,” cannot be made, but “grow.” Races, laws, arts, have their origins and end, are themselves ripples only on the great river of organic life; and language is changing on our very lips.

Mobility! We do not think that a necessarily undesirable condition of life, of mind, of the physical world about us. ’Tis the dead things, we may remind ourselves, that after all are most entirely at rest, and might reasonably hold that motion (vicious, fallacious, infectious motion, as Plato inclines to think) covers all that is best worth being. And as for philosophy—mobility, versatility, the habit of thought that can most adequately follow the subtle movement of things, that, surely, were the secret of wisdom, of the true knowledge of them. It means susceptibility, sympathetic intelligence, capacity, in short. It was the spirit of God that moved, moves still, in every form of real power, everywhere. Yet to Plato motion becomes the token of unreality in things, of falsity in our thoughts about them. It is just this principle of mobility, in itself so welcome to all of us, that, with all his contriving care for the future, he desires to withstand. Everywhere he displays himself as an advocate of the immutable. The Republic is a proposal to establish it indefectibly in a very precisely regulated, a very exclusive community, which shall be a refuge for elect souls from an ill-made world.

Metaphysical formulae have always their practical equivalents. The ethical alliance of Heraclitus is with the Sophists, and the Cyrenaics or the Epicureans; that of Parmenides, with Socrates, and the Cynics or the Stoics. The Cynic or Stoic ideal of a static calm is as truly the moral or practical equivalent of the Parmenidean doctrine of the One, as the Cyrenaic μονόχρονος ἡδονή—the pleasure of the ideal now—is the practical equivalent of the doctrine of motion; and, as sometimes happens, what seems hopelessly perverse as a metaphysic for the understanding is found to be realisable enough as one of many phases of our so flexible human feeling.

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Sources:

Pater, W. (1893). Plato and Platonism. Praeger.

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.

Walter Pater’s Heraclitean Excerpts from MARIUS: THE EPICUREAN

Important groundwork for Walter Pater’s New Cyrenaicism is the value he draws from the lesson Heraclitus didn’t really mean to teach, by taking his flux theory seriously as a description of subjective experience, properly considered, absent the tempering emphasis on the principled logos. In essence, this provides the foundation for privileging immediate pathē as an epistemic absolute and eschewing idealistic metaphysical concerns. I’ve collected together relevant quotes and subsections from Pater’s novel which address this preliminary stage, stressing the primary and parallel motivation with Orthodox Cyrenaic epistemology: the removal of abstract obstacles to pleasant living. I now present these selections: 

From Marius: The Epicurean:

Heraclitus, indeed, had not under-rated the difficulty for “the many” of the paradox with which his doctrine begins, and the due reception of which must involve a denial of habitual impressions, as the necessary first step in the way of truth. His philosophy had been developed in conscious, outspoken opposition to the current mode of thought, as a matter requiring some exceptional loyalty to pure reason and its “dry light.” Men are subject to an illusion, he protests, regarding matters apparent to sense. What the uncorrected sense gives was a false impression of permanence or fixity in things, which have really changed their nature in the very moment in which we see and touch them. And the radical flaw in the current mode of thinking would lie herein: that, reflecting this false or uncorrected sensation, it attributes to the phenomena of experience a durability which does not really belong to them.

Imaging forth from those fluid impressions a world of firmly outlined objects, it leads one to regard as a thing stark and dead what is in reality full of animation, of vigour, of the fire of life—that eternal process of nature, of which at a later time Goethe spoke as the “Living Garment,” whereby God is seen of us, ever in weaving at the “Loom of Time.”

And the appeal which the old Greek thinker made was, in the first instance, from confused to unconfused sensation; with a sort of prophetic seriousness, a great claim and assumption, such as we may understand, if we anticipate in this preliminary scepticism the ulterior scope of his speculation, according to which the universal movement of all natural things is but one particular stage, or measure, of that ceaseless activity wherein the divine reason consists. The one true being—that constant subject of all early thought—it was his merit to have conceived, not as sterile and stagnant inaction, but as a perpetual energy, from the restless stream of which, at certain points, some elements detach themselves, and harden into non-entity and death, corresponding, as outward objects, to man’s inward condition of ignorance: that is, to the slowness of his faculties. It is with this paradox of a subtle, perpetual change in all visible things, that the high speculation of Heraclitus begins. Hence the scorn he expresses for anything like a careless, half-conscious, “use-and-wont” reception of our experience, which took so strong a hold on men’s memories! Hence those many precepts towards a strenuous self-consciousness in all we think and do, that loyalty to cool and candid reason, which makes strict attentiveness of mind a kind of religious duty and service.

The negative doctrine, then, that the objects of our ordinary experience, fixed as they seem, are really in perpetual change, had been, as originally conceived, but the preliminary step towards a large positive system of almost religious philosophy. Then as now, the illuminated philosophic mind might apprehend, in what seemed a mass of lifeless matter, the movement of that universal life, in which things, and men’s impressions of them, were ever “coming to be,” alternately consumed and renewed. That continual change, to be discovered by the attentive understanding where common opinion found fixed objects, was but the indicator of a subtler but all-pervading motion—the sleepless, ever-sustained, inexhaustible energy of the divine reason itself, proceeding always by its own rhythmical logic, and lending to all mind and matter, in turn, what life they had.

In this “perpetual flux” of things and of souls, there was, as Heraclitus conceived, a continuance, if not of their material or spiritual elements, yet of orderly intelligible relationships, like the harmony of musical notes, wrought out in and through the series of their mutations—ordinances of the divine reason, maintained throughout the changes of the phenomenal world; and this harmony in their mutation and opposition, was, after all, a principle of sanity, of reality, there. But it happened, that, of all this, the first, merely sceptical or negative step, that easiest step on the threshold, had alone remained in general memory; and the “doctrine of motion” seemed to those who had felt its seduction to make all fixed knowledge impossible.

The swift passage of things, the still swifter passage of those modes of our conscious being which seemed to reflect them, might indeed be the burning of the divine fire: but what was ascertained was that they did pass away like a devouring flame, or like the race of water in the mid-stream—too swiftly for any real knowledge of them to be attainable. Heracliteanism had grown to be almost identical with the famous doctrine of the sophist Protagoras, that the momentary, sensible apprehension of the individual was the only standard of what is or is not, and each one the measure of all things to himself. The impressive name of Heraclitus had become but an authority for a philosophy of the despair of knowledge.

The bold mental flight of the old Greek master from the fleeting, competing objects of experience to that one universal life, in which the whole sphere of physical change might be reckoned as but a single pulsation, remained by him [Marius] as hypothesis only—the hypothesis he actually preferred, as in itself most credible, however scantily realisable even by the imagination—yet still as but one unverified hypothesis, among many others, concerning the first principle of things. He might reserve it as a fine, high, visionary consideration, very remote upon the intellectual ladder, just at the point, indeed, where that ladder seemed to pass into the clouds, but for which there was certainly no time left just now by his eager interest in the real objects so close to him, on the lowlier earthy steps nearest the ground. And those childish days of reverie, when he played at priests, played in many another day-dream, working his way from the actual present, as far as he might, with a delightful sense of escape in replacing the outer world of other people by an inward world as himself really cared to have it, had made him a kind of “idealist.”

He was become aware of the possibility of a large dissidence between an inward and somewhat exclusive world of vivid personal apprehension, and the unimproved, unheightened reality of the life of those about him. As a consequence, he was ready now to concede, somewhat more easily than others, the first point of his new lesson, that the individual is to himself the measure of all things, and to rely on the exclusive certainty to himself of his own impressions. To move afterwards in that outer world of other people, as though taking it at their estimate, would be possible henceforth only as a kind of irony. And as with the Vicaire Savoyard, after reflecting on the variations of philosophy, “the first fruit he drew from that reflection was the lesson of a limitation of his researches to what immediately interested him; to rest peacefully in a profound ignorance as to all beside; to disquiet himself only concerning those things which it was of import for him to know.” At least he would entertain no theory of conduct which did not allow its due weight to this primary element of incertitude or negation, in the conditions of man’s life.

[At this point, we find the vital connection to Cyrenaic philosophy].

Aristippus of Cyrene too had left off in suspense of judgment as to what might really lie behind—flammantia mœnia mundi: the flaming ramparts of the world. Those strange, bold, sceptical surmises, which had haunted the minds of the first Greek enquirers as merely abstract doubt, which had been present to the mind of Heraclitus as one element only in a system of abstract philosophy, became with Aristippus a very subtly practical worldly-wisdom. The difference between him and those obscure earlier thinkers is almost like that between an ancient thinker generally, and a modern man of the world: it was the difference between the mystic in his cell, or the prophet in the desert, and the expert, cosmopolitan, administrator of his dark sayings, translating the abstract thoughts of the master into terms, first of all, of sentiment. It has been sometimes seen, in the history of the human mind, that when thus translated into terms of sentiment—of sentiment, as lying already half-way towards practice—the abstract ideas of metaphysics for the first time reveal their true significance.

The metaphysical principle, in itself, as it were, without hands or feet, becomes impressive, fascinating, of effect, when translated into a precept as to how it were best to feel and act; in other words, under its sentimental or ethical equivalent. The leading idea of the great master of Cyrene, his theory that things are but shadows, and that we, even as they, never continue in one stay, might indeed have taken effect as a languid, enervating, consumptive nihilism, as a precept of “renunciation,” which would touch and handle and busy itself with nothing. But in the reception of metaphysical formulæ, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought; there being at least so much truth as this involves in the theological maxim, that the reception of this or that speculative conclusion is really a matter of will. The persuasion that all is vanity, with this happily constituted Greek, who had been a genuine disciple of Socrates and reflected, presumably, something of his blitheness in the face of the world, his happy way of taking all chances, generated neither frivolity nor sourness, but induced, rather, an impression, just serious enough, of the call upon men’s attention of the crisis in which they find themselves. It became the stimulus towards every kind of activity, and prompted a perpetual, inextinguishable thirst after experience.

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Sources:

Pater, W. (1973). Marius the Epicurean / 1. Blackwell.