Happy Heroism

At first, it may seem unintuitive to consider heroic and godlike the Cyrenaic life of leisure, pleasure, ease, and comfort. The doxographical and historical material of Greek hedonism, however, makes a compelling case that the life of a happy and self-sufficient wiseman is most truly deserving of immortal depiction, and considered to be of far higher value than that of an ordinary existence. My touchstone examples are Aristippus the Elder, Hegesias the Death Persuader, Theodorus the Atheist, and Epicurus of Samos, each of which invokes imagery pulled from a shared background of Greek Mythos, Heroic Codes, or comparisons to Divinity, in order to illustrate their ethical achievements. This practice of casting ethical sages in heroic roles offers both a form of aesthetic idealism and provides examples of attitudinal embodiment, each powerful motivational tools for the attainment of successful living. 

By way of further explanation as to the historical importance and relevance of such an investigation, scholar Kurt Lampe points out the importance of the cultural background against which Greek ethicists pushed to restructure fellow citizens and their political organization, which illuminates the context of shared values from which these innovations emerged:

One of the striking features of most Greek philosophy is its aspiration to rebuild its practitioners from the “bare self ” up—to determine what is universally good and desirable, and to reorganize life and society based on this determination. But modern philosophers have rightly argued that the bare self is a fantasy; selfhood is largely constituted by libidinal, evaluative, and narrative orientations, which can only be altered gradually and piecemeal. (2017).

Building from this assumption, we find that the overwhelming proto-ethical influence on Athenian philosophy was handed down by earlier poetical mythology: 

…one complex of values that will prove illuminating in this study revolves around masculine competition and honor. This complex finds its most influential expression in Homer, whose epics The Iliad and The Odyssey precede Cyrenaicism by several hundred years. Homer’s enormous influence on subsequent Greek culture is well indicated by the claim in Plato’s Republic that “this poet educated Greece” (606e). The capacity of so-called “heroic values” to shed light on classical Greek culture has recently been demonstrated in studies of both Socratic philosophy and Athenian legal procedure. Closely related to this are other features of Homeric ethics and its descendants in lyric and tragic poetry, which will help to fill in the background behind otherwise puzzling Cyrenaic beliefs or behavior. (Lampe, 2017).

Aristippus the Elder: 

There are several versions of a common anecdote which demonstrates Aristippus’ valuation of his virtuous character and pleasant life in relation to others, which recalls the self-estimation of Odysseus: 

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).

 “…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!” (Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. 19.1.1 = SSR 4a.49).

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 his book The Birth of Hedonism, Kurt Lampe suggests that the adaptability and sociability of Aristuppus is reminiscent of the “hero’s cunning” familiar from Homeric epics. 

This social cunning blends into temperance as Diogenes’ testimony proceeds, beginning with the statement that Aristippus “always dealt successfully with whatever happened.” The phrase “deal successfully” (eu diatithemenos) implies active manipulation of the situation, which might require charm, quick-wittedness, and courage. But we are also drifting into the domain of temperance, the function of which is to keep before the mind’s eye what really matters and what does not. One reason Aristippus makes such good use of available opportunities, this passage hints, is because he knows that most situations offer some pleasures. This hint is corroborated by the very next clause, which says that Aristippus enjoys what is present and does not worry about what is absent…It is only by understanding emotionally and intellectually what matters and knowing that one has the capacity to secure these goods that anyone can really focus on the present. (Lampe, 2017).

As mentioned in the introductory paragraph, it may appear that the lifestyle advocated by Cyrenaics would be difficult to romanticize as explicitly heroic, however, such comparisons are not unusual for iconoclastic philosophical thinkers of this period: 

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 [Angela] 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…(2017).

Hegesias the Death Persuader: 

While Hegesias is a pessimist and diverges sharply from the eudaemonic telos of orthodox Cyrenaicism, his allusions to heroism are instructive, particularly for understanding the later comments and actions of someone like Theodorus. Hegesias believes that, 

The wise person will do everything for his own sake, because he considers no one equal to himself in worth. For even if he seems to receive the greatest profit from someone, it isn’t equivalent to what he himself provides. (D.L. 2.95)

The Hegesiac sage also displays powerful levels of magnanimity, due to their ethical superiority:

errors receive forgiveness. For a person does not err voluntarily, but because he is coerced by some passion. And ‹they› won’t hate, but will rather share ‹their› teaching” (D.L. 2.95). 

Theodorus the Atheist:

Theodorus famously displays his courage and superiority in a collection of oft-repeated anecdotes, not to mention his disregard for the danger inherent in impious suggestions, which won him the designation of ho atheos. Cicero’s renditions of Theodorus’ strength in the face of powerful figures will suffice to illustrate his attitude:

[VERSION 1] When Lysimachus was threatening Theodorus with death, he said, “It’s really a mighty thing you’ve accomplished, if you’ve acquired the power of the cantharis beetle! (Cic. Tusc. 5.117 = SSR 4h.7)

[VERSION 2] Shouldn’t we admire Theodorus of Cyrene? When king Lysimachus threatened him with torture, he replied, “Direct your threats to these luxuriously dressed friends of yours; it makes no difference to Theodorus whether he rots under ground or above it!” (Cic. Tusc. 1.102 = SSR 4h.8)

Philo also describes occasions where Theodorus personally compared himself to Homeric heroes in order to explain the true cause of his prior expulsions from Cyrene and Athens: 

The story goes that when Theodorus, nicknamed the Atheist, had been exiled from Athens and came to Lysimachus, an official mocked him for his flight and listed its causes: that he had been exiled on account of con- demnation for atheism and corruption of the youth. “I wasn’t exiled,” he replied. “The same thing happened to me as to Zeus’ son Heracles. He too was offloaded by the Argonauts, not because he did anything wrong, but because all by himself he was a full load and ballast and weighed them down. So he made his fellow sailors afraid the boat would fill with water. I changed residence for the same reason. The citizens of Athens couldn’t keep up with the profundity and magnitude of my thought, and they also envied me.” Then Lysimachus asked, “And were you also exiled from your own country because of envy?” And he answered, “Not because of envy, but because of the excesses of my nature, which my country couldn’t accommodate. Just like when Semele was pregnant with Dionysus, she couldn’t carry him for the defined time until his birth; but Zeus, struck with fear, extracted the fruit of her womb before its time, and made him equal in honor to the gods. In the same way some deity or god raised me up and decided to send me as a colonist to a better place, Athens, because my own country was too narrow to receive such a mass of philosophical wisdom.” (Quod omn. bon. lib. 127–30 = SSR 4h.9)

Diogenes Laertius also relates a dialogue between Theordorus and Stilpo, illustrating Theodorus’ sly wit and an apparent proclamation of self-deification: 

“Are you, Theodorus, what you declare yourself to be?” To this he assented, and Stilpo continued, “And do you say you are god?” To this he agreed. “Then it follows that you are god.” Theodorus accepted this, and Stilpo said with a smile, “But, you rascal, at this rate you would allow yourself to be a jackdaw and ten thousand other things.”

Epicurus of Samos:

There are multiple quotes from Epicurus comparing himself and other members of his school to the Gods and immortals, in order to praise the scope and importance of his teachings. We see an echo of Theodorean influence perhaps, which is all the more plausible considering Diogenes Laertius’ claim that Epicurus’ view on the gods was taken from Thedorus’ book. Some examples of comparisons include:

Vatican Saying 78: "The truly noble man busies himself chiefly with wisdom and friendship, of which the one is an understandable good but the other is immortal."

Go on thy way as immortal, and think of us as immortal too. (Epicurea fragment translated by Bailey).

Meditate then, on all these things, and on those things which are related to them, both day and night, and both alone and with like-minded companions. For if you will do this, you will never be disturbed while asleep or awake by imagined fears, but you will live like a god among men. For a man who lives among immortal blessings is in no respect like a mortal being. (Letter to Menoeceus). 

Norman DeWitt explains that, “Paradoxical as it must seem, Epicurus knows no higher praise than to call a thing immortal; being opposed in this text to understandable, it must mean "passing understanding."” (DeWitt, 1973). Epicurus famously denied the immortality of the soul, and also denied that the Gods interfered with the lives of men. Nevertheless, Epicurus was also somewhat “deified” in his sect, enjoying an immortality of reputation persisting long after his death. 

Sources:

DeWitt, N.W. (1973). Epicurus and His Philosophy. Greenwood Press.

Diogenes Laertius. (1980). Diogenes Laertius : lives of eminent philosophers. Harvard University Press.

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

New Cyrenaic Virtues

Pleasure (ἡδονή/hedonē): The pursuit of pleasure is the foundational virtue of Cyrenaic philosophy, as pleasant living is our telos. The Cyrenaic ethical project is a life organized around the life-guiding truth of pleasure and pain. Perception of the world is made in terms of opportunities for enjoyment, and risks of suffering distress. This is hedonic calculus in the economy of pleasure. We must investigate the causes and conditions that secure happiness and well-being, which means understanding physiology, psychology, and relevant externalities. We ought pursue sensual pleasures, intellectual excitement, and aesthetic delights. 

Education (παιδεία/paideia): The goals of philosophical education are tranquility, social mastery, and connoisseurship. Transforming “slavish” characters into free ones involves cultivating self-mastery (see: temperance), the capacity to speak with sophistication (see: sociability), and proper philosophical understanding. Education thereby removes impediments to the purest and most immediate reception of pleasurable experiences (see: presentism), including anxiety, regret, and unjustified (merely conventional) compunctions. Training also includes cultivation of appetite and the refinement of its satisfaction, increasing capacity for appreciation (see: sensitivity).

Presentism (monokhronos hēdonē): The pleasures we actively experience in the present moment are the true sensations of value. We telescope our concerns to the present moment as a spiritual exercise, prudential rule of thumb, and emotional attitude — not as an ontological straight-jacket. We thereby diminish discomfort and become more receptive to present pleasures. Due to the greater ability to affect the present moment, we put less faith in painstaking long-term planning than in our ability to adapt to circumstances. We must still plan and reflect, but we do so mindfully, always with an eye upon current conditions. 

Adaptability: Ability to harmonize with place, time, and role, and perform harmoniously in any circumstance. Confidence means feeling comfortable rather than anxious or fearful in unknown or threatening situations. Paradoxically, it is only a person of firm character and profound insight who can be so malleable, adapting comfortably to every situation. This requires gaining a range of basic competencies so that we can respond well in any situations, making us self-sufficient.

Temperance (σωφροσύνη/sōphrosūnē): Temperance involves keeping in mind what really matters and what does not. What really matters is simply to avoid pain and distress, and to experience some modicum of pleasure. We achieve the former by disdaining excess, which does not entail embracing austerity. Excess is relative to what is actually good — pleasure. This does not exclude luxury, but we avoid becoming attached to specific sources of pleasure and reduce our desires accordingly. Simple pleasure is enjoyable and sufficient, we ought never covet more than we currently possesses, nor be overcome by sensual enjoyment and lose our contentment.

Sociability (φιλία/philia): Capable of getting along with any sort of person whatsoever, and to do so without anxiety. This social confidence is based on the understanding both cognitively and emotionally that; 1. all one needs is to avoid pain and discover some modicum of pleasure, therefore, one feels more relaxed around other people. He or she does not need to impress anyone, since we are not after anything another can provide which we could not procure ourselves. 2. Just about every situation presents opportunities for enjoyment, which encourages simple accommodation of oneself to one’s company at any given moment. Training responsiveness, versatility, and adroitness. The wise man is comfortable in any situation, and adroit enough to turn it to his advantage. He speaks well, with knowledge and sophistication, possessing charm, humor, and quick-wittedness.

Sensitivity: Explore diverse and evocative sources of pleasure which require increased capacities for appreciation, such as aesthetic discernment, cultural enrichment, physical ability, dexterous skills, and intellectual stimulation. Training sensitivity to aesthetic delights, judged based on the virtuous merits regarding their degree, type, and unique sensory impressions with which they affect the individual’s “imaginative reason”. We refine all instruments of inward and outward intuition and impression, developing our capacities, in order to best receive and interact with the “beatific vision” of our experience in the world. This training involves, not the conveyance of doctrine or principles, but rather, the teaching of an art. Education increases one’s capacity for enjoyment.

Sympathy:  We have an empathetic distaste for causing or witnessing pain and discomfort due to our immediate grasp of the inherently evil nature of pain and suffering. We appeal to the aesthetic revulsion caused by the ugliness of suffering, prompting an amelioration of its causes if reasonable, and an avoidance of behavior which would bring it about. “How tenderly—more tenderly than many stricter souls—we might yield to kindly instinct, what fineness of charity in passing judgment on others, what an exquisite conscience of other men’s susceptibilities. We go beyond most people in our care for all weakly creatures.”

Earthen Character: Development generally of the more human and earthly elements of character. Virile consciousness of the realities of life, poetic apprehension, united with something of personal ambition and self-assertion. The earthly end comes like a final revelation of nothing less than the soul’s extinction. To the sentiment of the body, and the affections it defines — the flesh — one must cling; a materialist with the temper of a devotee. Amid abstract metaphysical doubts, as to what might lie one step only beyond that experience, we reinforce the deep original materialism or eathliness of human nature itself, bound so intimately to the sensuous world — let us at least make the most of what is “here and now”. 

Encyclopedia Britannica, “Cyrenaics”, by Hugh Chrisholm

CYRENAICS, a Greek school of philosophy, so called from Cyrene, the birthplace of the founder, Aristippus (q.v.). It was one of the two earliest Socratic schools, and emphasized one side only of the Socratic teaching (cf. Cynic). Socrates, although he held that virtue was the only human good, admitted to a certain extent the importance of its utilitarian side, making happiness at least a subsidiary end of moral action. Aristippus and his followers seized upon this, and made it the prime factor in existence, denying to virtue any intrinsic value. Logic and physical science they held to be useless, for all knowledge is immediate sensation (see Protagoras). These sensations are motions (κινήσεις) which (1) are purely subjective, and (2) are painful, indifferent or pleasant, according as they are violent, tranquil or gentle. Further they are entirely individual, and can in no way be described as constituting absolute objective knowledge. Feeling, therefore, is the only possible criterion alike of knowledge and of conduct. “Our modes of being affected (πάθη) alone are knowable.” Thus Cyrenaicism goes beyond the critical scepticism of the Sophists and deduces a single, universal aim for all men, namely pleasure. Furthermore, all feeling is momentary and homogeneous. It follows (1) that past and future pleasure have no real existence for us, and (2) that among present pleasures there is no distinction of kind, but only of intensity. Socrates had spoken of the higher pleasures of the intellect; the Cyrenaics denied the validity of this distinction and said that bodily pleasures as being more simple and more intense are to be preferred. Momentary pleasure (μονόχρονος ἡδόνη), preferably of a carnal kind, is the only good for man. Yet Aristippus was compelled to admit that some actions which give immediate pleasure entail more than their equivalent of pain. This fact was to him the basis of the conventional distinction of right and wrong, and in this sense he held that regard should be paid to law and custom. It is of the utmost importance that this development of Cyrenaic hedonism should be fully realized. To overlook the Cyrenaic recognition of social obligation and the hedonistic value of altruistic emotion is a very common expedient of those who are opposed to all hedonistic theories of life. Like many of the leading modern utilitarians, they combined with their psychological distrust of popular judgments of right and wrong, and their firm conviction that all such distinctions are based solely on law and convention, the equally unwavering principle that the wise man who would pursue pleasure logically must abstain from that which is usually denominated “wrong” or “unjust.” This idea, which occupies a prominent position in systems like those of Bentham, Volney, and even Paley, was evidently of prime importance at all events to the later Cyrenaics.

Developing from this is a new point of practical importance to the hedonism of the Cyrenaics. Aristippus, both in theory and in practice, insisted that true pleasure belongs only to him who is self-controlled and master of himself. The truly happy man must have φρόνησις (prudence), which alone can save him from falling a prey to mere passion. Thus, in the end, Aristippus, the founder of the purest hedonism in the history of thought, comes very near not only to the Cynics, but to the more cultured hedonism of Epicurus and modern thinkers. Theodorus, held even more strongly that passing pleasure may be a delusion, and that permanent tranquillity is a truer end of conduct. Hegesias denied the possibility of real pleasure and advocated suicide as ensuring at least the absence of pain. Anniceris, in whose thought the school reached its highest perfection, declared that true pleasure consists sometimes in self-sacrifice and that sympathy in enjoyment is a real source of happiness. Other members of the school were Arete, wife of Aristippus, Aristippus the younger (her son), Bio and Euhemerus.

The Cyrenaic ideal was, of course, utterly alien to Christianity, and, in general, subsequent thinkers found it an ideal of hopeless pessimism. Yet in modern times it has found expression in many ethical and literary works, and it is common also in other ancient non-Hellenic literature. There are quatrains in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and pessimistic verses in Ecclesiastes which might have been uttered by Aristippus. (“Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing than to eat and to drink and to be merry; for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life which God giveth him under the sun”). So in Byron and Heine, and, in a sense, in Walter Pater (Marius the Epicurean), there is the same tendency to seek relief from the intellectual cul-de-sac in frankly aesthetic satisfaction. Thus Cyrenaicism did not entirely vanish with its absorption in Epicureanism.

The New Cyrenaic System

With this entry I present a condensed vision of the entire New Cyrenaic system. All credit for philosophical originality properly belongs to the individual figures named and tagged - these are, in chronological order, Heraclitus of Ephesus, Aristippus of Cyrene, Epicurus of Samos, and Walter Pater. Additional credit is due to Charles Sanders Peirce, who, though I do not reproduce his doctrine in depth, broadly influenced the interpretation and perspective provided. My contribution is entirely dependent on underlying primary material provided by the aforementioned persons, and consists solely of trans-historical creative reinterpretation, aiming at a functional pastiche of cohesive elements. The unitive principle which informs this ethical project is total commitment to our immediate affectations as the sole criteria of truth and value. It is for the reader to test the following for themselves. 

Metaphysics and Epistemology: 

Empirical Idealism: Complete fidelity to immediate experience, consisting of sensory affections, as the sole source and criteria of knowledge. These subjective impressions vouch for themselves, and they do so inwardly, unmistakably, truly, and incorrigibly. Affections are elements of sensational awareness generated by movements of our physical being due to relational contact with external stimuli, and they fall into three categories: pleasurable, painful, or neutral. These latter, intermediate states provide representational information, of which there are innumerable varieties, and may also be accompanied by/provoke pleasurable or painful sensations. 

Hedonic Motivation: Among the affections we have the feelings called pleasure and pain. Pleasure is self-evidently choice-worthy, pain is self-evidently avoidance-worthy, and no other sensations possess these monadic qualities as a matter of brute experience. Consequently, these feelings alone are directly capable of motivating or guiding choice and avoidance. Emotions are the positive and negative responses respectively resulting from cognitive judgements, evaluative or prospective, according to the criteria of these two states. As further evidence of nature supplying the norm, we have the Cradle Argument, according to which we judge the evidence provided by uncorrupted beings, such as animals and young children, who, from birth, automatically pursue pleasure and shun pain without moralistic confusion.

Purgative Skepticism: Withdrawal of interest from all other alleged sources of knowledge beyond what can be accessed and verified through direct sense-perception, or can be inferred therefrom, eliminating concerns with speculative metaphysics and intrinsic axiological dogma, narrowing the field of legitimate concern and circumscribing the scope of epistemic ability. 

Impressionistic Flux: The impressions of experience are constantly undergoing changes, at different rates and in varying respects, with underlying continuity and fixed relationships among them. We observe that change is oppositional and bi-polar, operating according to an interplay of centrifugal and centripetal tendencies. Human beings, like all phenomena, are a developmental result of this self-same process, and within the nexus of experience, the mode of organic sense-perception operates along multiple qualitative continuums, the extremes of which we declare opposites. The mind is sensitive to patterns of behavior resulting from the interactivity of balanced forces because it is of the same nature, these habitual relationships being deemed “lawful” when applied to the predictable motions of external objects, and “logical” when considered cognitively. The universe is therefore comprehensible, directly as a matter of immediate experience, and inferentially as the approximate value of statistical ratios. 

Pragmatic Theory of Objects: Our conception of an object’s identity consists entirely in that confluence of present and expected relational effects, on other objects and on oneself directly, according to which we group and categorize entities in terms of their general characteristics and principles of action, within ranges of practical significance. 

Presentism: The present moment alone is truly ours, a bubble wherein experience unfolds and phenomena are open to purposeful interactivity. We yield to the improvement of the present, excluding all embarrassment alike of regret for the past and calculation for the future, as far as possible, in order to maximize attentive receptivity. (See “Present Focus” below for the practical application of this insight).

Ethics:

Individual Sensual Hedonism: The highest good (summum bonum) is one’s own pleasurable existence as a living organism. The end (to telos) is to live pleasantly/pleasurably, which is called happiness. All other goods are instrumental to securing and adorning one’s own pleasant living. Human happiness is psychosomatic, requiring physical health and mental well-being as both foundational states for seeking greater pleasure, and for maintaining the sensitivity of our apparatus for enjoyment.

Peace of Mind and Homeostasis of Body: The active pursuit of pleasures is balanced with the value of freedom from mental distress (or, possessing peace of mind), and freedom from bodily pain (or, preserving physical well-being). It is by pursuing, attaining, and maintaining this dual-aspect of healthiness, we may say biological hygiene, which provides pleasure in itself, and establishes the necessary pre-conditions for pursuing and appreciating higher pleasures.

Unitemporal Pleasure: The pleasures of the present experience are to be enjoyed fully as our highest goal, without undue concern for what has passed or what is to come, which is self-defeating. Pleasant living is to be accomplished within each individual unit of time, enjoying what is at hand, without excessive toil or yearning for what is not currently available.

Hierarchy of Desires: In order to prioritise our desires, we categorize them according to their level of necessity for the pleasant life, and their origin in natural or unnatural conditions, creating three distinct categories. Of the desires that are both natural and necessary, there are those which are required for our survival, those required for removing bodily pain, and those required for achieving happiness. Unnecessary desires ought to be pursued as augmenting necessary desires and contributing to happiness, but should not be chased at the expense of more basic requirements. 

Aesthetic Exemplarism: Projecting a vision of the successful life, informed by other persons and artistic representations, as tangible exemplars for our own aspirations. Additionally, 

“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 raiments we wear, our very pastimes and the inter course of society.” - Walter Pater. 

True aesthetic culture is realizable as a new form of the contemplative life, founded on the vision of perfect men, objects, and environments. Whatever form of human life which may be heroic, impassioned, ideal: these are the criterion of inspirational values.

Character and Attitude:

Education: The goals of philosophical education are tranquility, social mastery, and connoisseurship. Transforming “slavish” characters into free ones involves cultivating self-possession/-mastery, the capacity to speak with sophistication, and proper philosophical understanding. Education thereby removes impediments to the purest and most immediate reception of pleasurable experiences, including anxiety, regret, and unjustified (that is, merely conventional) compunctions. Training also includes cultivation of appetite and the refinement of its satisfaction, increasing capacity for appreciation.

Temperance: We strive to keep in mind what really matters and what does not. What really matters is simply to avoid pain and distress, and to experience some sort of pleasure. We achieve the former by disdaining excess, which does not entail embracing austerity, and not becoming attached/dependent to any particular source of pleasure. Excess is relative to what is actually good, which is pleasure, and this does not exclude luxury, but we avoid upsetting the hierarchy by chasing corrosive desires which cannot be satisfied. Those who are always dissatisfied, no matter what they acquire, have an illness. New Cyrenaic philosophy cures practitioners of their attachment to superfluities, freeing them from stress, insomnia, and the stranglehold of their preoccupations. Temperance also enables enjoyment: those with a sound mind can indulge in luxurious pleasures without becoming corrupted — that is, beginning to feel these are necessities.

Present Focus: Telescoping of concerns to the present moment as a spiritual exercise, prudential rule of thumb, and emotional attitude - not an ontological straight-jacket. We thereby diminish discomfort and become more receptive to present pleasures. Due to the greater ability to affect the present moment, we put less faith in painstaking long-term planning than in our ability to adapt to circumstances.

Adaptability and Confidence: Able to harmonize with place, time, and role, and perform harmoniously in any circumstance. Confidence means feeling comfortable rather than anxious or fearful in unknown or threatening situations. Paradoxically, it is only a person of firm character and profound insight who can be so malleable, adapting comfortably to every situation.

Sociability: Capable of getting along with any sort of person whatsoever, and do so without anxiety. This confidence is based on the understanding both cognitively and emotionally that; 1. all one needs is to avoid pain and discover some modicum of pleasure, therefore, the sage feels more relaxed around people. He or she does not need to impress anyone, since we are not after anything another can provide which we could not procure ourselves. 2. Just about every situation presents opportunities for enjoyment, which encourages simple accommodation of oneself to one’s company at any given moment.

Suavity: Training responsiveness, versatility, and adroitness. The wise man is comfortable in any situation, and adroit enough to turn it to his advantage. He speaks well, with knowledge and sophistication, possessing charm, humor, and quick-wittedness.

Walter Pater’s Philosophy: A Snapshot

In an earlier post I briefly outlined the orthodox Cyrenaic philosophical scheme, drawn primarily from the example of Aristippus himself in regards to ethical and sentimental content, supported by the epistemological developments contributed primarily by his grandson, the Metrodidact. Though not entirely rigorous in terms of historical accuracy (we have a pastiche outlining the basic commitments of the school, drawn from various anecdotes and doxographies, often hostile), nevertheless, I believe it is entirely within the pragmatic spirit of early Cyrenaicism and represents the school’s primary concerns and considerations. I find it valuable to reference a broad outline, focusing on the practical implications of each philosophical point, in order to better orient ourselves and structure our pursuits. After all, what’s of utmost importance is making our individual lives pleasant, not constructing an exhaustive ideology. Such an attitude of indifference to speculative constructs is a more authentic reflection of early Cyrenaicism than blind submission to an abstract theory. To the degree the ancient Cyrenaics involve themselves in eristics, they are entirely guided by affective commitments, and once satisfied of having reached greater consistency, or fended off some plausible criticism, they cease elaborating. 

With this in mind, I’d like to attempt a similar exposition of Walter Pater’s New Cyrenaicism, briefly organising its additional dimensions with reference to the underlying structure of the orthodox view. As a refined modern aesthete, Pater inventively commandeers the philosophical material of his spiritual predecessors and renovates the existing elements to suit his tastes. These updates have much to recommend them for a sympathetic contemporary reader. An important consideration rests with the pre-existing sensibilities of the would-be Cyrenaic. It’s worth asking yourself, before weighing the content, if your concerns are our concerns, your values our values. Otherwise, you may find more appeal in competing schools, (may I recommend Epicureanism as an outstanding alternative?) and if our brethren provide you with the fulfilment and happiness you are seeking, all the better. 

Something interesting to note is that, as the novel illustrating the development of New Cyrenaicism progresses, the protagonist comes to adopt, not merely the “first lesson” of Heraclitus - the metaphysical grounding in constant renewal for his scrupulous commitment to immediate experience - but also embraces something of his pantheistic organizing principle, the logos. I will have more to say regarding the intersection of Heraclitean metaphysics with Cyrenaic epistemology at a later date, but, a word of caution: while our tacit skepticism regarding ontological commitments does not prohibit sweeping generalizations from engulfing experiential phenomena, which includes the observation of causal regularity, we should properly subordinate this conceptual investigation to its appropriate position — that is, facilitating the pleasurable appreciation of some aspect of our waking world, which may otherwise remain neglected. I therefore pull short here of describing Marius’ concession to the notion of a universal “unfailing companion” amid his contact with early Christianity. This development, though fascinating, represents a divergence away from our core concerns as Cyrenaics. To interested readers, I recommend the second volume of Marius: The Epicurean. 

I now present Walter Pater’s New Cyrenaicism:

Epistemology:

• Purgative Skepticism: Acquiesence to the Heraclitean flux of impressions justifies withdrawal of interest from universal “objective” knowledge, beyond that which can be accessed through sense-perception, eliminating concerns with vast speculative metaphysics and intrinsic axiological imperatives. Consequently, this drily practical skepticism induces an anti-metaphysical metaphysic, disabused of the ambition to pass beyond “the flaming ramparts of the world”
• Empiricist Idealism: Complete fidelity to immediate experience — direct sensation — as the only criteria of truth. Constructing the world in great measure from within, by exercising meditative powers of selective focus upon our impressions, according to a vein of subjectivist philosophy with the individual for its standard, we are unable to wholly accept the valuations of others without personal verification. The object, the experience, as it will be known to memory, is really from first to last the chief point of consideration in the conduct of life.
• Presentism: The present moment alone is truly real, and we yield to its improvement, excluding all embarrassment alike of regret for the past and calculation for the future, as far as possible. The result of our purgative skepticism is the acknowledgement that what is secure in our existence is but the sharp apex of the present moment between two hypothetical eternities, and all that is real in our experience but a series of fleeting impression.
• Intellectual Integrity: Insight, free from ghostly idols, sends us back to experience, to the world of concrete impressions, with a liberated soul. With sober discretion of one’s thoughts, a sustained habit of meditation, the sense of the negative conclusions reached above enables us to concentrate ourselves upon what is immediately here and now, providing a peculiar manner of intellectual confidence as we live intently in the visible world.

Ethics:

• Aesthetic-Moral Idealism: Projecting and living a vision of the successful life. We 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 raiments we wear, our very pastimes and the intercourse of society. In other words, we learn and practice character, health, style, and sociability. True aesthetic culture is realizable as a new form of the contemplative life, founded on the vision of perfect men and things. Whatever form of human life which may be heroic, impassioned, ideal: these are the criterion of values. Skilled cultivation of life, of experience, of opportunity. Dilligent promotion of the capacity of the eye, to be “made perfect by the love of visible beauty”. The soul, which can make no sincere claim to have apprehended anything beyond the veil of immediate experience, yet never loses a sense of happiness in conforming to the highest moral ideal it can clearly define for itself. 
• Unitemporal Pleasure: Imperative to enliven each passing moment, in order to enter the “ideal now”. Much of the pleasant life is lived, also, in reminiscence, and it is proper to the economy of conduct to ask what value current action will hold upon reflection, once it has passed. Boundless appetite for experience, for adventure, whether physical or of the spirit. Follow the percept: Be perfect in regard to what is here and now; the precept of “culture”, as it is called, or of a complete education. To us, at least, in whom the fleeting impressions — faces, voices, material sunshine — are very real and imperious, we might well set ourselves to the consideration, how such actual moments as they pass might be made to yield their utmost, by the most dexterous training of capacity. Arresting the desirable moments as they pass, and prolonging their life a little. — To live in the concrete. To be sure, at least, of one’s hold upon that. This philosophic scheme is but the reflection of the data of sense, and chiefly of sight.
• Health: Vivid sense of the value of mental and bodily sanity; recognition of the beauty, even for the aesthetic sense, of mere bodily health. Honor the restorative benefits of sleep.
• Adaptability: We maintain harmony with the change and motion inherent in existence by constantly renewed mobility of character.
• Hedonic Economy: The deeper wisdom has ever been, with a sense of economy, with a jealous estimate of gain and loss, to use life, not as the means to some problematic end, but as an end in itself.
• Education and Refinement: Training sensitivity to aesthetic delights, judged based on the virtuous merits regarding their degree, type, and unique sensory impressions with which they affect the individual’s “imaginative reason”. We refine all instruments of inward and outward intuition and impression, developing our capacities, in order to best receive and interact with the “beatific vision” of our experience in the world. This training involves, not the conveyance of doctrine or principles, but rather, the teaching of an art. Education increases one’s capacity for enjoyment 
• Temperance: As a means to keeping the eye clean by a sort of exquisite personal alacrity and cleanliness; to meditate upon beautiful visible objects; to avoid jealously everything repugnant to sight. How little any of us really need, when people leave us alone, with the intellectual powers at work serenely. The drops of falling water, a few wild flowers with their priceless fragrance, a few tufts even of half-dead leaves, changing colour in the quiet of a room that has but light and shadow in it; these, for a susceptible mind, might well do duty for all the glory of Augustus.
• Earthen Character: Development generally of the more human and earthly elements of character. Virile consciousness of the realities of life, poetic apprehension, united with something of personal ambition and self-assertion. The earthly end comes like a final revelation of nothing less than the soul’s extinction. To the sentiment of the body, and the affections it defined — the flesh — one must cling; a materialist with the temper of a devotee. Amid abstract metaphysical doubts, as to what might lie one step only beyond that experience, we reinforce the deep original materialism or eathliness of human nature itself, bound so intimately to the sensuous world — let us at least make the most of what is “here and now”. 

Relationships:

• Sympathy: Empathetic distaste for causing or witnessing pain/discomfort. An appeal to the aesthetic revulsion caused by the ugliness of suffering, prompting an amelioration of its causes, and an avoidance of behavior which would bring it about. Sympathy for all creatures, something of a religious veneration for life itself.  How tenderly—more tenderly than many stricter souls—we might yield to kindly instinct, what fineness of charity in passing judgment on others, what an exquisite conscience of other men’s susceptibilities. We go beyond most people in our care for all weakly creatures; judging, instinctively, that to be but sentient is to possess rights. Are those sufferings, great or little, of more real consequence to others than mine to me?
• Companionship: The pleasant value of association with others. Companionship, indeed, familiarity with others, gifted in this way or that, or at least pleasant, are through one or another long span of life, the chief delight of the journey.

Sources:

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

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

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

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

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.