K. Urstad
Pathos, Pleasure and the Ethical Life
5
But third, and perhaps most
importantly, the sybaritic interpretation rides partly on a
confusion wrought up over the synonymy between the two Aristippi, the former and
his grandson of the same name (I return to this shortly). Moreover, many of the
attributions in the sources seem to be pointing to a view of the Cyrenaics in general,
failing in distinguishing between Aristippus himself and later modifications of his
followers. And why is this important? Because if we look closely at the testimony we
see that it is largely the Cyrenaics, and not Aristippus, who exalt bodily pleasures
and who take it to occupy a central place in their ethics.
7
For instance, in Diogenes’
first doxographical section comprising the life of Aristippus (which he marks off
from the rest of the Cyrenaics), there is no indication that bodily pleasures are
viewed as paramount. To be sure, there are references to luxurious living but there
are just as many, if not more, references to philosophical, intellectual, and artistic
pleasures –the sorts of enjoyments hard to square with a purely sybaritic or
sensationalistic conception of pleasure. This general mix of enjoyments stands in
somewhat stark contrast to the following section on his successors, the Cyrenaics,
where numerous explicit references are made to bodily pleasure as the best kind and
as occupying the final end
8
with comparatively little mention (and if so, in a lower
status) in the way of mental pleasures.
9
That said, there is one passage in particular which is often referred to as evidence of a
simple physicalist or bodily view of pleasure in Aristippus. Diogenes reports that
Aristippus “defined the telos as the smooth movement (th_n lei/an ki/nhsin) that comes
forth to perception” (II 85). Now we should be wary here in attributing such a claim
to Aristippus. Aristocles of Messene reports that Aristippus affirmed that the essence
of happiness lay in pleasures, without specification as to what sort, while his grandson,
Aristippus Junior, went on to clearly define these pleasures as movements or kinetic
(Eusebius, Praep. Ev. XIV. 18. 31).
10
Moreover this description at II 85 seems to be best
understood as one backed by a kind of radical epistemology –a view which we can
almost certainly claim had not been developed by Aristippus.
11
In any case, setting aside likely issues of conflation between Aristippus and his
grandson, the assumption here is that because Aristippus
characterizes pleasure as
involving some sort of physical movement that it must therefore be the bodily kind
which he has primarily in mind. But strictly considered, this account, i.e. that all
This, and the fact that
there are very few non-conflated references elsewhere to kinetic pleasures in
Aristippus (the elder), seems to suggest Diogenes has confused the evidence here.
7
For example, DL II 87; Cicero, Luc. 139; Lactantius, Divin. Inst. 28. 3, 34-7.
8
For instance, DL II 87, 89, 90.
9
Though there are perhaps a few exceptions, e.g. ibid, 89, 96.
10
Notice also that Athenaeus entangles Aristippus ‘and his followers’ when he ascribes kinetic pleasure to them
(Deip. XII, 546e).
11
For more on this, see Urstad, 2008, Section I.
K. Urstad
Pathos, Pleasure and the Ethical Life
6
pleasure experiences or perceptions are influenced by underlying physical
movements, need not entail such an assumption. That is, the fact that pleasure
involves being affected by some kind of underlying movement in the body need not
imply that the pleasure engaged in be of a direct bodily sort, like, for instance,
settling into a hot bath or getting a massage. Consider, for instance, Plato’s Philebus (a
composition of Aristippus’ time and available to him): Socrates, in giving what looks
like a generic account of pleasures, speaks of them as affections that “penetrate
through both body and soul and provoke a kind of upheaval (seismon) that is peculiar
to each but also common to both of them.” (33d, italics added) Whenever he speaks of
the more pure pleasures (e.g. those of expectation that the soul experiences by itself
without the body, 32c; those of pure colors, sounds, shapes and smells, 51b) he never
once indicates that a complexion of pleasures of this sort requires a different account
from the generic one. What looks to be implied here is that a kind of common
movement, both in the body and soul, is something that underlies all experiences of
pleasure.
12
Moreover, it is perhaps significant that Aristippus does not appear to adopt any
version of the most dominant conception of pleasure in and around his time. What I
am referring to here is the general restorative or replenishment view of pleasure,
which seems to have its roots in Empedocles and is developed and discussed
throughout many of Plato’s works (and is held by pleasure-pursuers like Callicles).
Aristippus, if indeed we are justified in attributing this passage in
Diogenes to him, need perhaps be no different in this regard.
13
12
Epicurus too appears to think that there are kinetic mental pleasures (Plut. Col. 1122e, Non Posse, 1087b).
13
See Gosling and Taylor, 1982 and Riel, 2000, for detailed examinations of this model. Gomperz, 1964, 215,
too seems to suggest that Aristippus’ concept of pleasure should not be seen in this light.
This view defines pleasure as the replenishment of a lack or the relief from distress, it
is the movement that consists in the restoration of an original harmony, the so-called
‘natural condition’.
Such a view does not seem to cohere with the testimony on Aristippus in the
following ways. To begin with, there is no indication, as far as I am aware, of a
description of pleasure in Aristippus as taking a certain direction, e.g. towards
repletion. Instead, what we do find, as just mentioned, is a description of pleasure as
occurring in a certain manner or as adopting a certain texture (th_n lei/an ki/nhsin, DL
II 85). Withholding the strong possibility of conflation, it is far from clear what
exactly is meant by this description, but, it is significant, I think, that the motion
spoken of here is a kinesis and not a genesis, since it is the latter, not the former, which
has more obvious affinities with the replenishment view. That is, pleasure as a
process of coming-to-be, and therefore for the sake of something else, fits well with
the view that pleasure is the process toward the natural condition, e.g. eating when
hungry for sake of the restoration of the body.