Below is a selection of Voula Tsouna’s The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School, taken from the appendix of this work, which collects together important historical sources and testimonies. I have reproduced and lightly edited this content here for ease of reference. Interested readers are encouraged to investigate Tsouna’s excellent work directly in order to benefit from her analysis of ancient Cyrenaic epistemology.
Sources and Testimonies:
The evidence on Cyrenaic epistemology comes from secondary sources and consists entirely of testimonies, not of fragments. None of the titles mentioned in the lists of the doxographers seems to be of an epistemological treatise. But the lists refer only to the works of Aristippus of Cyrene, Theodorus and Hegesias, and none of them is known to have had detailed epistemological views. The epistemology of the school may have been developed in treatises of Aristippus the Younger and Anniceris, probably under the heading of ethics.
Although the testimonies are second-hand and occur principally in polemical contexts, they are often based on good sources and constitute reliable evidence about the Cyrenaic positions. Also, the polemical arguments brought against these positions by ancient authors are fre- quently enlightening. In my selection of texts, I have included the epistemological testimonies, and also materials on psychology and ethics that have a bearing on the topics that I discuss.
1. Colotes and Plutarch:
Our earliest source on the Cyrenaic theory of knowledge is Colotes, a young contemporary of Epicurus. After Epicurus’ death (270 BC) and Arcesilaus’ ascent to the leadership of the Academy (c. 261 BC) Colotes wrote a book entitled On the Fact that it is not Possible even to Live according to the Doctrines of the Other Philosophers, in which he criticised the doctrines of Parmenides, Empedocles, Socrates, Melissus, Plato, Stilpo, and two schools which he does not name but which are easily identified as the Cyrenaics and the followers of Arcesilaus. His main aim was to prove that doctrines directly or indirectly undermining the credibility of the senses make life impossible. It is in this context that Colotes attempted to describe and ridicule the Cyrenaic theory of knowledge.
The evidence about Colotes’ attack against the Cyrenaics comes from the first–second century AD writer Plutarch. In his work Against Colotes, Plutarch cited Colotes’ criticisms, stated that they were grounded on a historically inaccurate rendering of the Cyrenaic doctrine, and gave what he claimed to be the true letter of this doctrine. Subsequently, he argued that the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans in fact held the same views concerning the truth of sense-impressions and that, therefore, by criticising the Cyrenaics Colotes contradicts himself. Thus, the passage from Plutarch’s work contains two pieces of evidence about the epistemology of the Cyrenaics, which are both chronologically and philosophically distinct: a third-century BC version of the doctrine offered by an Epicurean writer of the same period and a first-century AD version given and commented upon by Plutarch.
Plutarch, Against Colotes:
At any rate, after dealing with the philosophers of the past, [c] Colotes turns to the philosophers of his own time without mentioning the name of any of them; yet, the proper thing for him to do would have been to refute them too by naming them, or not to name the philosophers of the past either. And he, who so often criticised Socrates and Plato and Parmenides with his pen, obviously lost his nerve when he was to deal with the living philosophers; he was not moderate in his criticisms because he was respectful, or he would have shown respect to their betters (sc. the philosophers of the past). I guess he intends to refute the Cyrenaics in the first place and the Academy of Arcesilaus in the second place. The latter were the philosophers who suspended judgement about everything; but the former, placing all pathe! and all sense-impressions within themselves, [d] believed that the evidence coming from them is not sufficient regarding assertions about external objects. Instead, distancing them- selves from external objects, they shut themselves up within their pathē as in a state of siege, using the formula ‘it appears’ but refusing to affirm in addition that ‘it is’ with regard to external objects.
This is why, says Colotes, the Cyrenaics can neither live nor cope with things. In addition, he says, making fun of them, that ‘these men do not say that a man or a horse or a wall is, but that they themselves are being walled or horsed or manned’. In the first place, he is using these expressions maliciously, just as a professional denouncer would. Doubtless, these consequences amongst others do follow from the teachings of these men. Yet he should have presented the doctrine in the form in which those philosophers teach it. [e] They say we are being sweetened and bittered and chilled and warmed and illuminated and darkened, each of these pathe! having within itself its own evidence, which is intrinsic to it and irreversible. But whether the honey is sweet or the young olive-shoot bitter or the hail chilly or the unmixed wine warm or the sun luminous or the night air dark, is contested by many witnesses, [wild] animals and domesticated animals and humans alike, for some dislike honey, others like olive-shoots or are burned off by hail or are chilled by the wine or go blind in the sunlight and see well at night.[f] So, when opinion stays close to the pathē it preserves its infallibility, but when it oversteps them and meddles with judgements and assertions about external objects, it often both disturbs itself and fights against other people who receive from the same objects contrary pathē and different sense-impressions.
It would seem that Colotes has the same trouble as boys who are just starting to learn how to read. While they are used to spelling the characters on their tablets, when they see these characters written on others things outside the tablets, they are doubtful and confused. And so with him: the views which he follows eagerly and treats with respect when they occur in the writings of Epicurus, he neither understands nor identifies when they are asserted by others. Those who maintain that when a film of atoms rounded at the corners, or again another one which is bent, comes into contact with our senses, the sensation is truly imprinted, but who do not allow us to affirm as well that the tower is round or the oar is bent, do establish as true their own pathē and sense-appearances but do not want to concede that the external objects have these characteristics. And just as those philosophers (sc. the Cyrenaics) are committed to speaking about being horsed or being walled but not about a horse or a wall, so these philosophers (sc. the Epicureans) must say that the eye is rounded or with rough angles [b] and not that the oar is bent or the tower round. The film of atoms from which the eye has been affected is bent, whereas the oar from which the film of atoms has come is not bent. Thus, since the pathos differs from the object, it is necessary for belief either to stick to the pathos or to be refuted whenever it asserts how things are in addition to how things appear. As to the fact that they protest aloud and are vexed on behalf of sensation, which is to say that they do not affirm that the external object is warm but only that the pathos inherent in sensation is warm, is that statement not the same as the [Cyrenaic] statement about taste, i.e. that they (sc. the Cyrenaics) do not say that the external object is sweet, but that a pathos or a movement of this kind related to taste has occurred? [c] But the person who says that he is receiving a man-like sense-impression but is not sensing whether there is a man, from where has he got his original idea? Was it not from the philosophers who claim that they receive a curve-like sense-impression but that the sight does not go further to affirm that something is curved or round, but a sense-appearance or imprint of round form related to sight has occurred?
‘Most certainly,’ one will answer. ‘But for my part, after I come close to the tower and after I touch the oar, I shall assert that the oar is straight and that the tower is angular; but this other person, even if he gets close he will admit what seems to be the case and what appears to him, but nothing more.’ [d] Indeed, my dear friend, he will not, since he is better than you in observing and defending the logical consequences of his doctrine, that all sense-impressions alike are trustworthy about themselves and no sense-impression is trustworthy about anything else but all are equally good witnesses. And here is the end of your doctrine that all sense-impressions are true and none is unreliable or false, if indeed you think that this category of sense-impressions must state additional truths about the external objects, whereas you refused to trust that other category of sense-impressions in anything beyond the pathos itself. If they have an equal claim to trustworthiness, whether they occur as the result of observing an object closely or at a distance, it is only fair either to confer on all sense-impressions the power of making additional judgements about how things are, or to subtract that power from the former category of sense-impressions as well as from the latter. But if there is a difference in the pathos affecting one when one is at a distance and when one is close at hand, it is false to assert that no sense-impression and no sensation [e] is more evident than another. Likewise, what they call attestation and contestation have nothing to do with sensation but rather with belief. Thus, if they urge us to make assertions about the external objects by following these, they transfer the object of judgement from what is unfailingly true to what is often wrong. But why do we need to talk at present about views which are full of confusion and which contradict themselves?
2. Philodemus (?):
Approximately two centuries after Colotes and one century before Plutarch, the Cyrenaic doctrine may be briefly mentioned in an anonymous incomplete text on Epicurean ethics, probably composed in the first half of the first century BC by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara. The text was found in a Herculaneum papyrus, commonly known as ‘the Comparetti Ethics’ after the name of its first editor. The Cyrenaics are not named in it and their identification is conjectural. The evidence that appears to concern them occurs in the second and third columns of the papyrus, both of which are badly damaged. Their context is uncertain. But it is probable that in the first three columns of the text, the Epicurean author launched an attack against anti-rationalism, especially against positions undermining the belief that moral choices are performed according to rational calculation and on the basis of factual knowledge. His claim is, I think, that the epistemological views of the Cyrenaics dictated a kind of hedonism which precluded rational choice and rational justification of one’s actions. This text merits attention, since it is the only evidence that may refer explicitly to the philosophical relation between the epistemology and the ethics of the Cyrenaic school.
PHerc. 0250 [Philodemus] [On Choices and Avoidances]
Col. II . . . and they claim that in truth no (judgement) takes precedence over any other, being persuaded that the great pathos of the soul occurs as a result of pain and that thus we accomplish our choices and avoidances by observing both (sc. bodily and mental pain). It is not possible that the joys arise in us in the same way and all together, in accordance with some expectation . . .
Col. III . . . and some people denied that it is possible to know anything. And, further, they added that if nothing is present on account of which one should make an immediate choice, then one should not choose immediately. Some other people, having selected the pathē of the soul as the moral ends and as not in need of additional judgement based on further criteria, granted to everybody an authority, which was not accountable, to take pleasure in whatever they cared to name and to do whatever contributed to it. And yet others held the doctrine that what our school calls grief or joy are totally empty notions because of the manifest indeterminacy of things . . .
3. The Anonymous Theaetatus Commentator:
Another Greek source is the commentary on Plato’s Theaetetus, the only ancient commentary on that dialogue to survive to our days (Berlin papyrus 9782). Its author remains anonymous. He is probably a Middle Platonist, and his floruit may be anywhere between the first century BC and the second century AD. The seventy-five columns of the papyrus cover a relatively short part of the dialogue, from its opening at 042a to the application of the theory of perpetual flux to sense-perception at 053d. The epistemological position of the Cyrenaics is mentioned in connection with Theaetetus’ attempt to answer the question what is knowledge by defining knowledge as sense-perception.
The anonymous author comments on the Protagorean thesis that as things appear to one, so they are for one, and on the Heraclitean doctrine of flux brought in support of the epistemological relativism of Protagoras: in a universe of perpetual flux, nothing has a stable identity, for neither the perceiving subject or faculty nor the perceived object exist in themselves, but only in so far as they are perceived; so, things are for me such as they affect me and they are for you such as they affect you and, according to this hypothesis, man is the judge and measure of the affections or conditions which he experiences. Subsequently, the author attempts to clarify the application of the theory to the case of the perception of the wind by different people. He stresses that, according to the Protagorean–Heraclitean theory, different perceivers are affected differently by the same wind, in the same place, at the same time. The proponents of the theory conclude that the wind causing these pathe! is neither cold nor not cold, but that in reality it does not have such properties; for if a thing does have an intrinsic property, then it cannot produce different pathe! in different perceivers in the same conditions and at the same time. The author’s suggestion is that the Cyrenaic position, that only the pathē are apprehensible but the external objects are inapprehensible, is based on comparable grounds: we cannot tell whether the fire has the property of burning, because if it did, then all things that came into contact with it would be affected in the same way, i.e. they would burn.
The surviving commentary on the Theaetetus does not cover the part of the dialogue which contains the theory of the ‘subtler’ philosophers. However, the claim of its author that there is a close philosophical relation between the Protagorean–Heraclitean doctrine in Plato’s Theaetetus and the epistemological views of the Cyrenaics prefigures modern interpretations tending to identify these two doctrines.
Anonymous commentator on Plato’s Theaetetus:
Whence the Cyrenaics claim that the pathē alone are apprehensible but the external objects inapprehensible, for, they say, I apprehend that I am being burnt, but it is non-evident whether the fire is such as to burn. If it were such, all things would be burnt by it.
4. Cicero:
The earliest and most important Latin author reporting physiological and psychological views of the Cyrenaics is Cicero, the Roman politician and intellectual of the first century BC, whose philosophical viewpoint is shaped by Academic scepticism. In his work Lucullus, three passages offer important evidence about the Cyrenaic doctrine: an argument defending the power of the senses to comprehend their peculiar objects, which mentions the so-called internal touch – the sensory channel through which, according to the Cyrenaics, we apprehend the pathē; an argument destined to undermine belief in the credibility of the senses, which contains, again, a brief reference to the Cyrenaic position that the only things which can be apprehended are those experienced by internal touch; and a set of remarks aiming to locate the position of Antiochus on the subject of the criterion of truth, where the criteria of Protagoras, the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans are grouped together in opposition to Plato’s rationalistic criterion.
4a. Cicero, Lucullus 08-22:
08. . . .Thus, the whole discourse against the Academy is undertaken by us in this manner, so that we preserve the definition which Philo wanted to subvert; unless we make it prevail, we concede that nothing can be perceived.
09. So, let us start from the senses, whose judgements are so clear and certain that if our nature were given the choice and were asked by some god whether she was satisfied with her senses when they are intact and uninjured or whether she asked for something better, I cannot see what more she could require. Nor indeed do I have to delay here while I respond to the examples of the bent oar or the pigeon’s neck since I am not the one to say that whatever object is seen is such as it appears. Epicurus may reflect upon that and upon many other things. But, according to my judgement, the greatest truth lies in the senses, if they are healthy and powerful and if all obstacles and impediments are removed. This is why we often want to change the light and the position of the things which we are observing, and we either diminish or increase the distance between them and us, and we do many things until sheer sight acquires confidence in its own judgement. The same happens with sounds, smell or taste, so that there is none of us who wishes for a finer judgement in the senses, each in its own kind.
21. Indeed, when practice and skill are added in order for the eyes to comprehend a painting and the ears music, who is there who will not perceive how much power lies in the senses? How many things painters may see in shadows and in the light parts of the painting which we do not see! How many things which escape us in music are listened to by those trained in this kind of thing, who as soon as the flute-player blows the first note affirm that this is Antiope or Andromache, while we do not even suspect it! There is no need to talk at all about taste and smell, in which there is a certain power of apprehension, albeit defective. Why should we speak of touch and indeed of what the philosophers call internal touch of either pleasure or pain, in which alone, the Cyrenaics believe, lies the criterion of the true because it (sc. the true) is sensed [through it]? So, can anybody say that there is no difference between the man who is in pain and the man who experiences pleasure, or is it that the person who thinks so is clearly insane?
20. But then, the things which we claim to be perceived by the senses are of the same kind as those which are said to be perceived not by the senses themselves but in some way through the senses, as for instance: ‘This is white’, ‘This is sweet’, ‘This is harmonious’, ‘This is fragrant’, ‘This is rough.’ Surely, these we believe to be grasped by the mind, not by the senses. Thus, ‘This is a horse’, ‘This is a dog’. Then follows the rest of the series connecting more complexconcepts,forinstancethosewhichincludeasitwereacomplete understanding of things: ‘If one is a man, one is a rational mortal animal.’ From this latter kind are imprinted upon us our primary notions of things, without which all understanding and enquiry and discussion are impossible.
22. Now, if there were false primary notions (for you seemed to render ennoiai by ‘notions’) – if, then, these were false or imprinted by appearances of such a kind that could not be distinguished from false ones, how would we make use of them after all? And how could we see what is consistent with any given thing and what is inconsistent with it? At any rate, no room at all is left for memory, which more than anything else sustains not only philosophy but also all practice of life and all the arts. How can there possibly be a memory of what is false? Or what can anyone remember that one does not understand and hold in one’s mind? Indeed, what art can there be that does not consist, not of one or two, but of many mental percepts? And if you do away with it, how will you distinguish the expert from the ignorant? We shall not claim at random that this man is an expert and the other is not, unless we see the one remember what he has perceived and understood while the other does not. And just as one category of arts is such as to discern things only with the mind, and another such as to do or to construct something, how can the geometrician discern things that are either non-existent or cannot be distinguished from false ones, or how can the player of the harp perfect his rhythms and complete his verses? The same result will also occur in other arts of this kind, whose entire performance consists in making and doing; for what can be accomplished by an art unless the man who will exercise it has learned many mental percepts?
4b. Cicero, Lucullus 75-6:
75. Do I not give you the impression that I do not simply mention the names of illustrious men, as Saturninus did, but also I always take as my model someone who is famous and noble? And yet, I could mention philosophers who are troublesome to your school but of small importance – Stilpo, Diodorus, Alexinus, the authors of certain intricate and cunning sophismata (for this is how deceitful and trifling riddles are called). But why should I bring them in, when I have Chrysippus who is supposed to sustain the portico of the Stoics? How many arguments he produced against the senses and against everything that is approved in ordinary usage! But, you will retort, he also refuted them. In fact he does not seem to me to have done so. But suppose that he did: yet, surely, he would not have gathered so many arguments which might deceive us because of their great probability, had he not seen that they could not easily be resisted.
76. What do you think of the Cyrenaics, by no means contemptible philosophers? They deny that there is anything that can be perceived from the outside: the only things that they do perceive are those which they sense by internal touch, for instance pain or pleasure, and they do not know whether something has a particular colour or sound, but only sense that they are themselves affected in a certain way.
4c. Cicero, Lucullus 042-3:
042. I come now to the third part of philosophy. One criterion is that of Protagoras, who holds that what appears to a person is true for that person, another is that of the Cyrenaics, who believe that there is no criterion whatso- ever except the inmost affects, another is that of Epicurus, who places the whole criterion in the senses and in the primary notions of things and in pleasure. On the other hand, Plato believed that the whole criterion of truth and truth itself lies merely in reasoning and in the mind, detached from belief and from the senses.
043. Surely our friend Antiochus does not endorse any of this?
5. Aristocles:
Another Greek source is Aristocles of Messene, a second-century AD Peripatetic philosopher whose work is partly preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Preparation for the Gospel. The structure of this testimony has made scholars wonder whether Aristocles is Eusebius’ source throughout the passage, or whether Eusebius drew from Aristocles’ work only when he cited specific objections against Cyrenaic epistemology.
The passage is divided into two distinct parts. The first part opens with the observation that the criticisms against the Cyrenaic thesis that the pathē alone are apprehensible are similar to the objections raised against the Pyrrhonians, thus placing them in the broader context of an attack against scepticism in general. This remark is followed by a parenthetical passage concerning the alleged hedonism of Aristippus of Cyrene, the three initial stages of the Cyrenaic succession and the contribution of Aristippus the Younger to the psychological and ethical doctrines of the school. Then the text returns to the epistemology of the Cyrenaics, and in particular to the position of Aristippus the Younger concerning the three conditions of human constitution – pleasure, pain and the neutral condition. Regarding the authorship of this first part, it seems to me that Aristocles is its main source. Eusebius may have changed its original structure somewhat, but I doubt that he altered Aristocles’ views in any significant respect. The parenthetical passage (whose authorship is controversial) may have been introduced by Aristocles in order to give some information about the school, including the psychological positions of Aristippus the Younger which are central to his epistemological views.
The second part of the text is an attack against the epistemological doctrine of the school and its original author is undoubtedly Aristocles. His discussion of Greek scepticism is probably based on Academic texts and it appears likely that both his account and his criticisms of the Cyrenaic doctrine also come from an Academic source.
Aristocles, quoted by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel:
So much for those who are believed to follow the philosophy of Pyrrho. The objections raised against the followers of Aristippus the Cyrenean, who claim that only the pathē are apprehensible, are of a similar kind. Aristippus was a companion of Socrates who formulated the Cyrenaic doctrine from which Epicurus took material for his own presentation of the moral end. Aristippus was very voluptuous and pleasure-loving. But he never lectured on the moral end in public. However, he said that the substance of happiness lies potentially in particular pleasures. And by speaking continuously about pleasure, he led his followers to the suspicion that he maintains that living pleasurably is the moral end. One of his disciples was also his daughter, Arete. When she gave birth to a son she named him Aristippus, who was called The Mother-Taught because he was introduced to philosophy by her. He clearly defined the moral end as living pleasantly, introducing the concept of pleasure as motion. He said that there are three conditions regarding our own constitution: one in which we are in pain and which resembles the storm in the sea, another in which we experience pleasure and which is similar to smooth sea-waves (for pleasure is a smooth movement compared to a fair wind); as to the third state, it is an intermediate condition, nearly resembling a calm sea, in which we experience neither pain nor pleasure. Indeed, he said, we have the sensation of these pathē alone. The following objections are raised against these philosophers.
Next would be those who claim that the pathē alone are apprehensible. This claim was made by some of the philosophers from Cyrene. These philosophers maintained that they know absolutely nothing, just as if a very deep sleep weighs down on them, unless somebody standing beside them struck or pricked them; for they said that when they are being burnt or cut, they know that they are undergoing something. But whether the thing which is burning them is fire or that which is cutting them is iron, they cannot tell. But then one would immediately ask those who hold these views whether they know this at least, that they are undergoing and that they are sensing something. If they did not, they would not be able even to say that they know only the pathos; but again, if they do know this, then it is not true that only the pathē are apprehensible, for ‘I am being burnt‘ is a locution, not a pathos. At any rate, it is necessary that at least these three things exist together, the pathos itself, the thing that produced it and the subject undergoing it. Thus, the person apprehending the pathos would certainly sense the affected subject as well. It cannot be that, if one happens to be warmed, one will know that one is being warmed but will not know whether oneself or one’s neighbour is the person who is being warmed. One will also know if this happens now or last year, if it happened in Athens or in Egypt, if one is alive or dead, and further, if one is a human being or a stone. So, one will also know what one is affected by; for people are acquainted with each other and they know the streets, the towns and nourishment. Again, the craftsmen know their own tools, the doctors and the seamen infer by means of signs the things to come, and dogs discover the tracks of the wild animals. Besides, the person who is undergoing a pathos must perceive it either as something welcome or as an unwelcome pathos. Then, by what means will one be able to tell that this is pleasure or this is pain? Or that one is undergoing something, when one is tasting or seeing or hearing? Or that one is tasting something with the tongue, seeing with the eyes or hearing with the ears? And how do they know that they ought to choose this thing but to avoid the other? In fact, if none of these things stirs them, they will have no impulse and no desire. But then they would not be animals either. It follows that they are ridiculous every time that they say that these things have happened to them, but that they do not know how or in what way. In that case, they would not be able to tell even whether they are human beings or whether they are alive. Consequently, neither could they tell whether they say or assert something. At this point, what could one tell such people? Of course, it is surprising if they do not know whether they are on earth or in the heavens. And it would be much more surprising if they do not know whether indeed four is more than three or what one and two make, and yet they affirm that they practise philosophy, for they cannot even say how many fingers they have on their hands or whether each of them is one or many. Thus, they would not know their own name or their fatherland or Aristippus. They would not know whom they love or hate, or what they desire. Nor will they be able to say whether they laughed or wept because one thing was funny and the other sad. So it is obvious that they also do not understand what we are talking about at this very moment. But then such people would not differ at all from peacocks or flies, although even they know the things which are in accordance with nature and the things which are not.
6. Sextus Empiricus:
The Sceptic and empiricist physician Sextus Empiricus (probably second century AD) is our best source on Cyrenaic epistemology. His main references to the doctrine occur in The Outlines of Pyrrhonism and in his work Against the Professors. His reference to the Cyrenaic doctrine is narrowly focused on some fundamental differences between the Pyrrhonian and the Cyrenaic versions of scepticism. On the other hand, his other account contains, arguably, the richest and most subtle presentation of the Cyrenaic position. It occurs in the context of a general survey of the views of the dogmatic philosophers on the subject of the criterion of truth and, more specifically, it is placed towards the middle of the final doxographical session, which is devoted to the doctrines of those dogmatic philosophers who maintained that the criterion lies in enargeia (whether accompanied by logos or not). There are good reasons for believing that the ultimate source of that passage is the work Canonica by Antiochus of Ascalon, a near contemporary of the founder of neo- Pyrrhonism, Aenesidemus (first century BC). Finally, Sextus’ reference to the Cyrenaic doctrine is found in the context of the dogmatic disagreement concerning the existence of sound.
a. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism:
In What Respect Skepticism Differs From Cyrenaic Philosophy:
Some people maintain that the Cyrenaic doctrine is the same as Scepticism, since it too says that only the pathē are apprehensible. In fact, it differs from Scepticism because the former maintains that the moral end is pleasure and the smooth movement of the flesh, whereas we say that it is tranquillity, wherefore it is opposed to their conception of the moral end. Whether pleasure is present or absent, the person who affirms that pleasure is the moral end submits to troubles, as I have concluded in the chapter about it. Besides, we suspend judgement about the external objects, as far as the arguments go. The Cyrenaics, on the other hand, affirm that the external objects have an inapprehensible nature.
b. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors:
Now that an account of the Academic doctrine from Plato onwards has been rendered above, it is not perhaps out of place to go over the position of the Cyrenaics. It seems that the school of these men has sprung from the philosophy of Socrates, from which also emerged the succession of Plato’s school. So, the Cyrenaics claim that the pathē are the criteria and that they alone are apprehended and are not deceitful, but that none of the things productive of the pathē is apprehensible or undeceitful. It is possible, they say, to assert infallibly and truly and firmly and incorrigibly that we are being whitened or sweetened, but it is impossible to affirm that the thing productive of the pathos in us is white or sweet, because one may be disposed whitely even by something not-white or may be sweetened by something not-sweet. For just as the sufferer from vertigo or from jaundice is stirred by everything yellowly, and the one suffering from ophthalmia is reddened, and the person who presses down his eye is stirred as if by two objects, and the madman sees Thebes as if it were double and imagines the sun double, and in all these cases it is true that people are undergoing this particular pathos, for instance they are being yellowed or reddened or doubled, but it is considered false that the thing which stirred them is yellow or red or double, likewise it is very plausible for us to assume that one can grasp nothing but one’s own pathē . Hence, we must posit either that the pathē are phainomena or that the things productive of the pathē are phainomena. And if we call the pathē phainomena, we must declare that all phainomena are true and apprehensible. But if we call the things productive of the pathē phainomena, all phainomena are false and inapprehensible. The pathos which occurs in us reveals to us nothing more than itself. Hence, if one must speak but the truth, only the pathos is actually a phainomenon to us; but what is external and productive of the pathos perhaps exists, but it is not a phainomenon to us. And so, we are all unerring with regard to our own pathē, but we all make mistakes with regard to the external object; and those are apprehensible, but this is inapprehensible because the soul is too weak to distinguish it on account of the places, the distances, the motions, the changes, and numerous other causes. Hence they say that no criterion is common to mankind but that common names are assigned to objects. All people in common call something white or sweet, but they do not have something common that is white or sweet. Each person is aware of his own private pathos, but whether this pathos occurs in oneself and in one’s neighbour from a white object one cannot tell oneself, since one is not submitting to the pathos of the neighbour, nor can the neighbour tell, since he is not submitting to the pathos of that other person. And since no pathos is common to us all, it is hasty to declare that what appears to me of a certain kind appears of this same kind to my neighbour as well; for perhaps I am constituted so as to be whitened by the external object when it comes into contact with my senses, while another person has the senses constructed so as to have been disposed differently. In any case, the phainomenon is assuredly not common to us all. And that we really are not all stirred in the same way because of the different constructions of our senses is clear from the cases of people who suffer from jaundice or ophthalmia and from those who are in a normal condition. Just as some persons are affected yellowly, others redly and others whitely from one and the same object, likewise it is also probable that those who are in normal condition are not stirred in the same manner by the same things because of the different construction of their senses, but that the person with grey eyes is stirred in one way, the one with blue eyes in another, and the one with black eyes in another yet different way. It follows that the names which we assign to things are common, but that we have private pathē.
What these philosophers say about the criteria seems to correspond to what they say about the moral ends, for the pathē do also extend to the moral ends. Some of the pathē are pleasant, others are painful and others are inter- mediate; and the painful ones are, they say, evils whose end is pain, the pleasant ones are goods, whose unmistakable end is pleasure, and the intermediates are neither goods nor evils, whose end is neither a good nor an evil, this being a pathos between pleasure and pain. Thus, the pathē are the criteria and the ends of things, and we live, they say, by following these and by attending to evidence and to approval, to evidence regarding the other pathe! and to approval in relation to pleasure.
Such are the teachings of the Cyrenaics, who restricted the criterion more than the school of Plato. The latter considered it a compound of evidence and reason, whereas the Cyrenaics confine it to the enargeiai, i.e., to the pathē alone.
c. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors:
From these arguments, it is evident that the whole theory of the musicians about melody consisted essentially in nothing else but the musical notes. So, if these are done away with, music will be nothing. But how could one claim that the musical notes do not exist? Because, we will answer, they belong to the genus of sound and because it has been proven in the memoirs of Scepticism that sound does not exist, by appealing to the evidence of the Dogmatists. And besides, the Cyrenaic philosophers claim that only the pathe! exist, and nothing else. So, since sound is not a pathos but rather something capable of producing a pathos, it is not one of the things that exist. To be sure, by denying the existence of every sensory object, the schools of Democritus and of Plato deny the existence of sound as well, since sound is taken to be a sensory object.
d. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors:
According to some people the Cyrenaics too endorsed the ethical branch of philosophy only, and dismissed the physical and logical branches as contribu- ting nothing to a happy life. However, some have thought that they (sc. the Cyrenaics) refute themselves from the way they divide ethics into headings – one dealing with objects of choice and avoidance, another with the pathē , yet another with actions, another with causes, and finally one with arguments. Among these, they say, the heading dealing with causes in fact is drawn from physics, while that dealing with arguments is drawn from logic.
7. Diogenes Laërtius:
Diogenes Laertius’ work Lives of Eminent Philosophers may have been written in the third century AD. The Cyrenaic school is discussed in book of that work, which also contains the Lives of Socrates and of several Socratic philosophers in addition to the Cyrenaics. The structure of the testimony on the Cyrenaics comprises the Life of Aristippus of Cyrene, followed by a passage on the successions of the Cyrenaic school, and then by the successive presentation of the doctrines of the Cyrenaics proper, i.e. ‘those who remained attached to the sect of Aristippus and were known as Cyrenaics’, of Hegesias and his disciples, Anniceris and his disciples, and the sect of Theodorus.
The account focuses on the ethical doctrines of the Cyrenaics, but parts of it are crucial for the interpretation of the epistemology of the school. It supplies information about the physiological features of the doctrine and it cites two tenets directly relevant to Cyrenaic epistemology. The first occurs at the end of Aristippus’ Life and concerns his definition of the moral end as ‘the smooth motion resulting in sensation’. The second tenet is encountered towards the end of the section on the Cyrenaics proper: the pathē themselves are apprehensible, but not the things that cause them. Although this is the central epistemological position of the Cyrenaics, it is not further analysed in this context. It may be mentioned in order to support the claim that the Cyrenaics held that things appear incomprehensible and for that reason abandoned the study of physics.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers:
He (sc. Aristippus of Cyrene) declared that the moral end is the smooth motion when it comes forth to consciousness.
(86) The philosophers who abode by the teaching of Aristippus and were called Cyrenaics had the following beliefs. There are two pathē, pain and pleasure, pleasure being a smooth motion and pain a rough motion. (87) One pleasure does not differ from another nor is one pleasure more pleasant than another in any respect. And pleasure is agreeable while pain is repulsive to all animals. However, notably according to Panaetius in his work On the Philosophical Sects, the bodily pleasure, which is the moral end, is not the static pleasure occurring after the removal of pain or, as it were, the freedom from discomfort, which Epicurus accepts and maintains to be the moral end.
(88) Individual pleasure is desirable for its own sake, whereas happiness is not desirable for its own sake but for the sake of individual pleasures. That pleasure is the moral end is proved by the fact that, from an early age onwards, we welcome it without making a deliberate choice, and once we obtain it, we seek for nothing more and avoid nothing so much as its opposite, pain. Pleasure is good even if it comes from the most unseemly actions, as Hippobotus says in his book On the Philosophical Sects. Even if the action is inappropriate, still the pleasure that results from it is desirable for its own sake and is good. (89) However, the removal of pain, as it is defined by Epicurus, seems to them (sc. the Cyrenaics proper) not to be pleasure at all, nor the absence of pleasure pain; for they hold that both pleasure and pain are in motion, whereas the absence of pain or the absence of pleasure is not a motion, since the absence of pain resembles the condition of somebody who is asleep. They assert that some people may fail to choose pleasure because of some perversion. Not all psychic pleasures and pains are ultimately dependent on bodily pleasures and pains. We are disinterestedly delighted at the prosperity of our country as if it were our own prosperity. Again, they do not accept that pleasure consists in the memory of past goods or in the expectation of goods to come, as Epicurus held, (91) for the motion of the soul expires with time.
They (sc. the Cyrenaics proper) said that the pathē are apprehensible themselves, not the things from which they derive. And they abandoned the study of nature because of its manifest uncertainty; but they engaged in logic because of its usefulness. However, Meleager in the second book of his work On Philosophical Doctrines and Clitomachus in the first book of his work On the Philosophical Sects attest that the Cyrenaics considered both physics and dialectic useless.
They (sc. the Cyrenaics proper) maintain that the sorrow of one person exceeds that of another, and that the senses do not always tell the truth.
They (sc. the Hegesians) also believed that there is nothing pleasant or unpleasant by nature. It is because of the lack of something or its rarity or its superabundance that some people feel pleasure while others feel disgust. Poverty and wealth have nothing to do with pleasure, for the rich and the poor do not feel pleasure in different ways. Slavery and freedom, noble birth or low birth, glory or dishonour, are also indifferent in measuring pleasure.
They (sc. the Hegesians) refuted the senses, since they do not yield accurate knowledge. And they claimed to do whatever appeared reasonable. They also said that errors should be forgiven, for no person errs voluntarily, but because he is compelled by a pathos. And we must not hate the erring man, but we should teach him better. The wise man does not have so much privilege over other people in his choice of goods as he has in avoiding evils, positing as a goal to live without bodily or mental pain. (96) This is the advantage gained by those who have been indifferent about the things capable of producing pleasure.
The Annicerians agreed in other respects with them (sc. the Hegesians, but also the Cyrenaics proper); but they admitted that friendship and gratitude and respect for parents exist in life, and that the wise man will act in some cases for the sake of his country.
He (sc. Theodorus) said that the world was his country. Theft, adultery and sacrilege are allowed upon occasion; for none of these things is wrong by nature, once we remove the belief which is kept up in order to bind together the multitude.
The latest testimonies, only recently included in the evidence about Cyrenaic epistemology, come from two Christian authors, well-versed in Greek and Roman culture: Eusebius of Caesarea (who appears to speak on his own account in this passage) and the fourth–fifth century AD. Latin author and Church Father, St Augustine.
8. Eusebius:
Eusebius cites the central epistemological thesis of the Cyrenaics in the same breath as the attitudes of the Pyrrhonians and the positions of Metrodorus and Protagoras, thus suggesting that their theory has affinities with scepticism, sensationalism and relativism.
a. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel:
Aside from the philosophers that have been set forth by us, in this gymnastic contest the stadium will also contain, stripped of all truth, those from the opposite side who took up arms against all the dogmatic philosophers put together (I mean the school of Pyrrho), and who declared that nothing amongst men is apprehensible, and also the school of Aristippus, who maintain that only the pathē are apprehensible, and again the schools of Metrodorus and Protag- oras who hold that we must trust only the sensations of the body.
b. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel:
After him (sc. Socrates) the school of Aristippus of Cyrene and then later the school of Aristo of Chios tried to claim that in doing philosophy we should study only ethics; for it is both possible and useful. In complete contrast, accounts of nature are neither apprehensible nor, even if it turns out that they are clearly understood, do they have any usefulness.
9. St. Augustine:
St Augustine’s testimony is crucial to our discussion. In the treatise Contra Academicos, he sets out to examine a hypothetical challenge that a sceptic might address to a person, namely that one is deceived in believing that one is tasting something sweet while, in fact, one is dreaming. In his retort, St Augustine emphasises the irrefutability of subjective experience and mentions in that connection the doctrines of the Epicureans and of the Cyrenaics. The importance of this passage lies in the fact that it might be considered to raise the problem of the external world, and it also might appear to support Plutarch’s claim that the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans held very similar positions regarding the reliability of the senses.
St Augustine, Contra Academicos:
This I say, that a person, when he is tasting something, can swear with good faith that he knows through his own palate that this is sweet, or to the contrary, and he cannot be brought away from that knowledge by any Greek trickery. Who would be so shameless as to say to me when I am licking something with delight: ‘maybe you are not tasting, but this is a dream’? Do I resist? But that would delight me even if I were asleep. And so, no likeness of false things confuses that which I said I know, and an Epicurean or the Cyrenaics may perhaps say many other things in favour of the senses, against which I have observed that nothing was said by the Academics.
Source:
Tsouna, V. (1998). The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School. Cambridge University Press.
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