The Megarics and Eretrians, as far as we know them, turned their speculative activity altogether in the logical or intellectual direction, paying little attention to the ethical and emotional field. Both Antisthenes and Aristippus, on the contrary, pursued the ethical path. To the Sokratic question, What is the Bonum? Eukleides had answered by a transcendental definition: Antisthenes and Aristippus each gave to it an ethical answer, having reference to human wants and emotions, and to the different views which they respectively took thereof. Antisthenes declared it to consist in virtue, by which he meant an independent and self-sufficing character, confining all wants within the narrowest limits: Aristippus placed it in the moderate and easy pleasures, in avoiding ambitious struggles, and in making the best of every different situation, yet always under the guidance of a wise calculation and self-command. Both of them kept clear of the transcendental: they neither accepted it as Unum et Omne (the view of Eukleides), nor as Plura (the Eternal Ideas or Forms, the Platonic view). Their speculations had reference altogether to human life and feelings, though the one took a measure of this wide subject very different from the other: and in thus confining the range of their speculations, they followed Sokrates more closely than either Eukleides or Plato followed him. They not only abstained from transcendental speculation, but put themselves in declared opposition to it. And since the intellectual or logical philosophy, as treated by Plato, became intimately blended with transcendental hypothesis — Antisthenes and Aristippus are both found on the negative side against its pretensions. Aristippus declared the mathematical sciences to be useless, as conducing in no way to happiness, and taking no account of what was better or what was worse.[27] He declared that we could know nothing except in so far as we were affected by it, and as it was or might be in correlation with ourselves: that as to causes not relative to ourselves, or to our own capacities and affections, we could know nothing about them.[28]
[27] Aristotel. Metaph. B. 906, a. 32. ὥστε διὰ ταῦτα τῶν σοφιστῶν τινες οἷον Ἀρίστιππος προεπηλάκιζον αὐτὰς (τὰς μαθηματικὰς τέχνας)· — ἐν μὲν γὰρ ταῖς ἄλλαις τέχναις, καὶ ταῖς βαναύσοις, οἷον ἐν τεκτονικῇ καὶ σκυτικῇ, διότι βέλτιον ἢ χεῖρον λέγεσθαι πάντα, τὰς δὲ μαθηματικὰς οὐθένα ποιεῖσθαι λόγον περὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν.
Aristotle here ranks Aristippus among the σοφισταί.
Aristippus, in discountenancing φυσιολογίαν, cited the favourite saying of Sokrates that the proper study of mankind was ὅττι τοι ἐν μεγάροισι κακόν τ’ ἀγαθόν τε τέτυκται.
Plutarch, ap. Euseb. Præp. Evang. i. 8.
[28] Sext. Emp. adv. Math. vii. 191; Diog. L. ii. 92.
Preponderance of the negative vein in the Platonic age.
Such were the leading writers and talkers contemporary with Plato, in the dialectical age immediately following on the death of Sokrates. The negative vein greatly preponderates in them, as it does on the whole even in Plato — and as it was pretty sure to do, so long as the form of dialogue was employed. Affirmative exposition and proof is indeed found in some of the later Platonic works, carried on by colloquy between two speakers. But the colloquial form manifests itself evidently as unsuitable for the purpose: and we must remember that Plato was a lecturer as well as a writer, so that his doctrines made their way, at least in part, through continuous exposition. But it is Aristotle with whom the form of affirmative continuous exposition first becomes predominant, in matters of philosophy. Though he composed dialogues (which are now lost), and though he appreciates dialectic as a valuable exercise, yet he considers it only as a discursive preparation; antecedent, though essential, to the more close and concentrated demonstrations of philosophy.
Harsh manner in which historians of philosophy censure the negative vein.
Most historians deal hardly with this negative vein. They depreciate the Sophists, the Megarics and Eretrians, the Academics and Sceptics of the subsequent ages — under the title of Eristics, or lovers of contention for itself — as captious and perverse enemies of truth.