It is to be remembered that Dionysius the Elder lived and reigned until the year 367 B.C., in which year his son Dionysius the Younger succeeded him. The death of Sokrates took place in 399 B.C.: between which, and the accession of Dionysius the Younger, an interval of 32 years occurred. Plato was old, being sixty years of age, when he first visited the younger Dionysius, shortly after the accession of the latter. Aristippus cannot well have been younger than Plato, and he is said to have been older than Æschines Sokraticus (D. L. ii. 83). Compare D. L. ii. 41.
When, with these dates present to our minds, we read the anecdotes recounted by Diogenes L. respecting the sayings and doings of Aristippus with Dionysius, we find: that several of them relate to the contrast between the behaviour of Aristippus and that of Plato at Syracuse. Now it is certain that Plato went once to Syracuse when he was forty years of age (Epist. vii. init.), in 387 B.C. — and according to one report (Lucian, De Parasito, 34), he went there twice — while the elder Dionysius was in the plenitude of power: but he made an unfavourable impression, and was speedily sent away in displeasure. I think it very probable that Aristippus may have visited the elder Dionysius, and may have found greater favour with him than Plato found (see Lucian, l. c.), since Dionysius was an accomplished man and a composer of tragedies. Moreover Aristippus was a Kyrenæan, and Aristippus wrote about Libya (D. L. ii. 83).
[204] See the epigram of the contemporary poet, Theokritus of Chios, in Diog. L. v. 11; compare Athenæus, viii. 354, xiii. 566. Aristokles, ap. Eusebium Præp. Ev. xv. 2.
Aristippus composed several dialogues, of which the titles alone are preserved.[205] They must however have been compositions of considerable merit, since Theopompus accused Plato of borrowing largely from them.
[205] Diog. L. ii. 84-85.
Ethical theory of Aristippus and the Kyrenaic philosophers.
As all the works of Aristippus are lost, we cannot pretend to understand fully his theory from the meagre abstract given in Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes. Yet the theory is of importance in the history of ancient speculation, since it passed with some modifications to Epikurus, and was adopted by a large proportion of instructed men. The Kyrenaic doctrine was transmitted by Aristippus to his disciples Æthiops and Antipater: but his chief disciple appears to have been his daughter Arêtê: whom he instructed so well, that she was able to instruct her own son, the second Aristippus, called for that reason Metrodidactus. The basis of his ethical theory was, pleasure and pain: pleasure being smooth motion, pain, rough motion:[206] pleasure being the object which all animals, by nature and without deliberation, loved, pursued, and felt satisfaction in obtaining pain being the object which they all by nature hated and tried to avoid. Aristippus considered that no one pleasure was different from another, nor more pleasurable than another:[207] that the attainment of these special pleasurable moments, or as many of them as practicable, was The End to be pursued in life. By Happiness, they understood the sum total of these special pleasures, past, present, and future: yet Happiness was desirable not on its own account, but on account of its constituent items, especially such of those items as were present and certainly future.[208] Pleasures and pains of memory and expectation were considered to be of little importance. Absence of pain or relief from pain, on the one hand — they did not consider as equivalent to positive pleasure — nor absence of pleasure or withdrawal of pleasure, on the other hand — as equivalent to positive pain. Neither the one situation nor the other was a motion (κίνησις), i.e. a positive situation, appreciable by the consciousness: each was a middle state — a mere negation of consciousness, like the phenomena of sleep.[209] They recognised some mental pleasures and pains as derivative from bodily sensation and as exclusively individual — others as not so: for example, there were pleasures and pains of sympathy; and a man often felt joy at the prosperity of his friends and countrymen, quite as genuine as that which he felt for his own good fortune. But they maintained that the bodily pleasures and pains were much more vehement than the mental which were not bodily: for which reason, the pains employed by the laws in punishing offenders were chiefly bodily. The fear of pain was in their judgments more operative than the love of pleasure: and though pleasure was desirable for its own sake, yet the accompanying conditions of many pleasures were so painful as to deter the prudent man from aiming at them. These obstructions rendered it impossible for any one to realise the sum total of pleasures constituting Happiness. Even the wise man sometimes failed, and the foolish man sometimes did well, though in general the reverse was the truth: but under the difficult conditions of life, a man must be satisfied if he realised some particular pleasurable conjunctions, without aspiring to a continuance or totality of the like.[210]
[206] Diog. L. ii. 86-87. δύο πάθη ὑφίσταντο, πόνον καὶ ἡδονήν· τὴν μὲν λείαν κίνησιν, τὴν ἡδονήν, τὸν δὲ πόνον, τραχεῖαν κίνησιν· μὴ διαφέρειν τε ἡδονὴν ἡδονῆς, μηδὲ ἥδιον τι εἶναι· καὶ τὴν μὲν, εὐδοκητὴν πᾶσι ζώοις, τὸν δὲ ἀποκρουστικόν.
[207] Diog. L. ii. p. 87. μὴ διαφέρειν τε ἡδονὴν ἡδονῆς, μηδὲ ἥδιον τι εἶναι. They did not mean by these words to deny that one pleasure was more vehement and attractive than another pleasure, or that one pain is more vehement and deterrent than another pain: for it is expressly said afterwards (s. 90) that they admitted this. They meant to affirm that one pleasure did not differ from another so far forth as pleasure: that all pleasures must be ranked as a class, and compared with each other in respect of intensity, durability, and other properties possessed in greater or less degree.
[208] Diog. L. ii. pp. 88-89. Athenæus, xii. p. 544.