Cyrenaics a classical Greek philosophical school that began shortly after Socrates and lasted for several centuries, noted especially for hedonism. Ancient writers trace the Cyrenaics back to Aristippus of Cyrene (fifth-fourth century B.C.), an associate of Socrates. Aristippus came to Athens because of Socrates’ fame and later greatly enjoyed the luxury of court life in Sicily. (Some people ascribe the founding of the school to his grandchild Aristippus, because of an ancient report that the elder Aristippus said nothing clear about the human end.) The Cyrenaics include Aristippus’s child Arete, her child Aristippus (taught by Arete), Hegesius, Anniceris, and Theodorus. The school seems to have been superseded by the Epicureans. No Cyrenaic writings survive, and the reports we do have are sketchy.
The Cyrenaics avoid mathematics and natural philosophy, preferring ethics because of its utility. (According to them, not only will studying nature not make us virtuous, it also won’t make us stronger or richer.) Some reports claim that they also avoid logic and epistemology. But this is not true of all the Cyrenaics: according to other reports, they think logic and epistemology are useful, consider arguments (and also causes) as topics to be covered in ethics, and have an epistemology. Their epistemology is skeptical. We can know only how we are affected; we can know, e.g., that we are whitening, but not that whatever is causing this sensation is itself white. This differs from Protagoras’s theory; unlike Protagoras the Cyrenaics draw no inferences about the things that affect us, claiming only that external things have a nature that we cannot know. But, like Protagoras, the Cyrenaics base their theory on the problem of conflicting appearances. Given their epistemology, if humans ought to aim at something that is not a way of being affected (i.e., something that is immediately perceived according to them), we can never know anything about it. Unsurprisingly, then, they claim that the end is a way of being affected; in particular, they are hedonists. The end of good actions is particular pleasures (smooth changes), and the end of bad actions is particular pains (rough changes). There is also an intermediate class, which aims at neither pleasure nor pain. Mere absence of pain is in this intermediate class, since the absence of pain may be merely a static state. Pleasure for Aristippus seems to be the sensation of pleasure, not including related psychic states. We should aim at pleasure (although not everyone does), as is clear from our naturally seeking it as children, before we consciously choose to. Happiness, which is the sum of the particular pleasures someone experiences, is choiceworthy only for the particular pleasures that constitute it, while particular pleasures are choiceworthy for themselves. Cyrenaics, then, are not concerned with maximizing total pleasure over a lifetime, but only with particular pleasures, and so they should not choose to give up particular pleasures on the chance of increasing the total. Later Cyrenaics diverge in important respects from the original Cyrenaic hedonism, perhaps in response to the development of Epicurus’s views. Hegesias claims that happiness is impossible because of the pains associated with the body, and so thinks of happiness as total pleasure minus total pain. He emphasizes that wise people act for themselves, and denies that people actually act for someone else. Anniceris, on the other hand, claims that wise people are happy even if they have few pleasures, and so seems to think of happiness as the sum of pleasures, and not as the excess of pleasures over pains. Anniceris also begins considering psychic pleasures: he insists that friends should be valued not only for their utility, but also for our feelings toward them. We should even accept losing pleasure because of a friend, even though pleasure is the end. Theodorus goes a step beyond Anniceris. He claims that the end of good actions is joy and that of bad actions is grief. (Surprisingly, he denies that friendship is reasonable, since fools have friends only for utility and wise people need no friends.) He even regards pleasure as intermediate between practical wisdom and its opposite. This seems to involve regarding happiness as the end, not particular pleasures, and may involve losing particular pleasures for long-term happiness. See also EUDAIMONISM , HEDONISM , SOCRA- TE. H.A.I.