The following is a brief excerpt from Archibald Alexander’s A Short History of Philosophy (1907), touching on Aristippus and the Cyrenaic School.
The Cyrenaic School:
The Cyrenaic school, which was the antithesis of the Cynic, sought the essence of life in pleasure. Aristippus, its founder, set forth as the principle of life, that a man must not be the slave but the master of circumstances, if he would lead a happy life. Pleasure is indeed the aim, but it must be pleasure in its highest forms. Nothing is bad or shameful which ensures real enjoyment. To the attainment of happiness, however, discrimination, moderation and spiritual culture are necessary. It must be admitted that the theory of Aristippus was more in consonance with the teaching of Socrates than of the Cynics, which it opposed. His idea of self-mastery was not mutilation, but use. The Cynic sought to starve desire, but in so doing was in danger of reducing life to barrenness. The Cyrenaic believed in gratifying desire within limits, ruled by a quantitative measure of happiness. In theory this conception seemed to present the truest ideal of self-realization — the Socratic idea of “using the world without abusing it.” Yet, in its ultimate analysis, it really made pleasure and not virtue the end of life, and in practice it led to the most selfish interpretations. Of the other hedonists, Theodorus declared that the highest thing in life is the joy arising from the ability, in all the relations of life, to be guided by a rational purpose. Hegesias regarded the absence of pain as the only worthy goal of the wise man, while Annicerus thought that withdrawal from society is impossible, and that, therefore, the true aim is to take as much enjoyment out of life as can be got.
Sources:
Alexander, A. (1907). A Short History of Philosophy. James Maclehose and Sons Publishers.
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