ARISTIPTIIS, the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy among the Greeks, was the son of Aritades, a wealthy gentleman of Cyrene, in Africa, and was b. in that city about the year 424.13.c. Having come. over to dreece to attend the Olympic games, he heard so much of Socrates, that he was filled with an eager desire to see the sage, and hurried to Athens, where he became one of his pupils. He remained with Socrates up nearly to the last moments of the great teacher, though he does not at any period seem to have followed his doctrines or his practice. We know that subsequently he was the object of strong dislike, both to Plato and to Antisthenes, the stoic. He passed a consid erable part of his life in Syracuse, at the court of Dionysius, the tyrant, where he acquired the reputation of a philosophic voluptuary. That his manners must have been at once extremely graceful and accommodating, is clear from the saying of his opponent, Plato, who declared that " A. was the only man he knew who could wear with equal grace both fine clothes and rags." Diogenes Laertius records a number of his dicta, some of which take the form of bons-mots, and indicate a sharp, cutting, lively, and self complaisant nature. A. also lived at Corinth, in intimacy with the famous courtesan Lays, but towards the close of his life, lie is supposed to have retired to Cyrene. His daughter Arete seems to have been a person of superior abilities, inasmuch as her father imparted his letiding doctrines to her, and she to her ton, A. the younger (hence called hietrodidaktos, " taught by the mother"), by whom they are supposed to have been sys tematized. A., in all probability, published nothing during his life. He prided himself
more upon spending his days in what he conceived to be a philosophical manner, than in elaborating a philosophical system for the benefit of the race.
The Cyrenaic school, all the teachers of which were probably imbued with the spirit of A. and merely carried out his doctrines to their legitimate results, professed a great contempt for speculative philosophy, and for physical and mathematical knowledge. They confined their investigations to morals, and formed an ethical system completely in harmony with the gay, self-possessed, worldly, and skeptical character of their mas ter. The chief points of the Cyrenaic system were: 1. That all human sensations are either pleasurable or painful, and that pleasure and pain are the only criterions of good and bad. 2. That pleasure consists in a gentle, and pain in a violent motion of the soul.
3. That happiness is simply the result of a continuous series of pleasurable sensations.
4. That actions are in themselves morally indifferent, and that men are concerned only with their results. Wieland in his historico-philosophical romance, Aristipp and einige seiner Zeitgenossen (A. and Some of his Contemporaries), presents us with a charming picture of the life and opinions of the great philosophical sensualist, who stood out in strong relief against the gloom and austerity of Antisthenes and the cynical school. See IrVendt's De Philosophi4 Cyrenaicd (Gott. 1842).