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
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