The Lives and Opinions of Eminent PhilosophersDiogenes Laertius
Philosophy
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Diogenes Laertius
Philosophers, Ancient -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient
VII. But since we have written his life, let us now speak of the
Cyrenaics who came after him; some of whom called themselves Hegesiaci,
some Annicerei, others Theodorei. And let us also enumerate the disciples
of Phædo, the chief of whom were the Eretrians. Now the pupils of
Aristippus were his own daughter Arete, and Æthiops of Ptolemais, and
Antipater of Cyrene. Arete had for her pupil the Aristippus who was
surnamed μητροδίδαντος, whose disciple was Theodorus the atheist, but
who was afterwards called θεὸς. Antipater had for a pupil Epitimedes of
Cyrene, who was the master of Paræbates, who was the master of Hegesias,
who was surnamed πεισιθάνατος (persuading to die), and of Anniceris who
ransomed Plato.
VIII. These men then who continued in the school of Aristippus, and
were called Cyrenaics, adopted the following opinions.—They said that
there were two emotions of the mind, pleasure and pain; that the one,
namely pleasure, was a moderate emotion; the other, namely pain, a rough
one. And that no one pleasure was different from or more pleasant than
another; and that pleasure was praised by all animals, but pain avoided.
They said also that pleasure belonged to the body, and constituted
its chief good, as Panætius also tells us in his book on Sects; but
the pleasure which they call the chief good, is not that pleasure as
a state, which consists in the absence of all pain, and is a sort of
undisturbedness, which is what Epicurus admits as such; for the Cyrenaics
think that there is a distinction between the chief good and a life of
happiness, for that the chief good is a particular pleasure, but that
happiness is a state consisting of a number of particular pleasures,
among which, both those which are past, and those which are future, are
both enumerated. And they consider that particular pleasure is desirable
for its own sake; but that happiness is desirable not for its own sake,
but for that of the particular pleasure. And that the proof that pleasure
is the chief good is that we are from our childhood attracted to it
without any deliberate choice of our own; and that when we have obtained
it, we do not seek anything further, and also that there is nothing which
we avoid so much as we do its opposite, which is pain. And they assert,
too, that pleasure is a good, even if it arises from the most unbecoming
causes, as Hippobotus tells us in his Treatise on Sects; for even if an
action be ever so absurd, still the pleasure which arises out of it is
desirable, and a good.
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