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Updated: May 26, 2025
One while I become active, and am plunged in the waves of state affairs, a maintainer and a rigid partisan of strict virtue; then again I relapse insensibly into Aristippus' maxims, and endeavor to adapt circumstances to myself, not myself to circumstances.
"Which of the two," continued Socrates, "would you teach to abstain from drinking when he was thirsty, to sleep but little, to go late to bed, to rise early, to watch whole nights, to live chastely, to get the better of his favourite inclinations, and not to avoid fatigues, but expose himself freely to them?" "The same still," replied Aristippus.
UTILITARIAN MORALITY. Henceforth there is no morality; without the power to will this and not to will that, there is no possible morality. Hobbes retorts with "utilitarian morality": What man should seek is pleasure, as Aristippus thought; but true pleasure that which is permanent and that which is useful to him.
He omitted to do this, because in his secluded life he had succeeded in finding the happiness which the master promises to his disciples. From Athens to Cyrene, from Epicurus to Aristippus, is but a short step, and Cleopatra took it when she forgot that the master was far from recognizing the chief good in the enjoyment of individual pleasure.
Defendant is charged with seducing Dionysius, plaintiff's admirer. Just. Five will do for that. Her. Luxury v. Virtue, re Aristippus. Just. Five again. Her. Bank v. Diogenes, alleged to have run away from plaintiff's service. Just. Three only. Her. Painting v. Pyrrho. Desertion from the ranks. Just. That will want nine. Her. What about these two charges just brought against a rhetorician? Just.
Therefore I cannot but here stop short a little in the course of my narrative, to describe the manner of life which the so much envied arbitrary power and the so much celebrated and admired pomp and pride of absolute government obliged Aristippus to lead.
The ruler of a state cannot always be truthful, and I often have failed in truth; but my intercourse with Publius has aroused much that is good in me, and which had been slumbering with closed eyes; and if this man should prove to be the same as all the rest of you, then I will follow your road, Euergetes, and laugh at virtue and truth, and set the busts of Aristippus and Strato on the pedestals where those of Zeno and Antisthenes now stand."
'Not that I can tax, he continues, however, 'or condemn the application of learned men to men in fortune. And he proceeds to quote here, approvingly, a series of speeches on this very point, which appear to be full of pertinence; the first of the philosopher who, when he was asked in mockery, 'How it came to pass that philosophers were followers of rich men, and not rich men of philosophers, answered soberly, and yet sharply, 'Because the one sort knew what they had need of, and the other did not'. And then the speech of Aristippus, who, when some one, tender on behalf of philosophy, reproved him that he would offer the profession of philosophy such an indignity, as for a private suit to fall at a tyrant's feet, replied, 'It was not his fault, but it was the fault of Dionysius, that he had his ears in his feet'; and, lastly, the reply of another, who, yielding his point in disputing with Caesar, claimed, 'That it was reason to yield to him who commanded thirty legions, and 'these, he says, 'these, and the like applications, and stooping to points of necessity and convenience, cannot be disallowed; for, though they may have some outward baseness, yet, in a judgment truly made, they are to be accounted submissions to the occasion, and not to the person.
In what respect did the Grecian Aristippus act like this; who ordered his slaves to throw away his gold in the midst of Libya; because, encumbered with the burden, they traveled too slowly? Which is the greater madman of these two? An example is nothing to the purpose, that decides one controversy by creating another.
That theory, of course, was the doctrine of the perpetual flux of things as taught by Aristippus of Cyrene, making a man of the world's practical application of the old Heraclitean formula, his influence depending on this, "that in him an abstract doctrine, originally somewhat acrid, had fallen upon a rich and genial nature well fitted to transform it into a theory of practice of considerable stimulative power toward a fair life."
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