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This chapter challenges the rather common view that Hellenistic-Roman thought shows a shift towards a more subjective and individualistic conception of self. It argues that this period expresses an ‘objective-participant’ conception, like that of Classical Greece. The account of self-knowledge in Plato’s Alcibiades is offered as an illustration of Classical Greek objective-participant thinking about the self. The chapter contests the idea, maintained by some scholars, that we find a shift towards a more subjective conception of self in the Stoic theory of development as appropriation or in Epictetus’ Stoic teachings on practical ethics. It also questions the idea that we can find in ancient thought generally certain themes associated in modern thought with subjective conceptions of selfhood, especially that of the uniquely ‘first-personal’ viewpoint; this point is illustrated by reference to Cyrenaic and Sceptical thought about impressions.

In Plato's lifetime, Aristippus, a disciple of Socrates, defended at least some aspects of the hedonist position that came to be known as Cyrenaic. At the same time, Antisthenes defended the sufficiency of virtue for happiness, and understood this doctrine to exclude hedonism. His views were taken to extremes by Diogenes the Cynic. Later critics were surprised that moralists with such sharply opposed views could all claim to defend a Socratic position. Some have called the Cyrenaics and Cynics ‘the incomplete Socratics’, conveying the suggestion that they saw only one side of Socrates, and presumably that Plato and Aristotle saw both sides, and so reached a more accurate picture of him. This suggestion may not be quite fair to the one-sided Socratics. Socrates' views may have been indefinite enough to make each ‘incomplete’ construal of him a defensible way of tying up some loose ends that Socrates left.

This chapter discusses Plato's ethical views and compares the Republic with the Socratic dialogues. The structure and style of the Republic encourages this comparison. The Socratic positions that it considers are recognizable in Plato's early dialogues. If Cynic and Cyrenaic views go back to Plato's contemporaries, one should suppose that he writes the middle and late dialogues against a background of conflicting interpretations and evaluations of Socrates. According to the Republic, some identify the good with pleasure, others with intelligence. Plato mentions these two candidates again in the Philebus. These descriptions capture the Cyrenaic and the Cynic attitudes to virtue, pleasure, and happiness. Plato disagrees with both of them. Plato and Aristotle do not dominate later reflexion on Socrates or later ethical theory. On the contrary, the one-sided Socratics influence the main Hellenistic ethical theories; the Stoics seem to derive more from the Cynics, and the Epicureans from the Cyrenaics, than either school seems to derive from Plato or Aristotle.

This chapter examines Plutarch's arguments in response to Colotes' claims against Cyrenaic epistemology. Colotes accused the Cyrenaics of making life impossible to live by claiming that they can only apprehend their own pathē, but not the external object causing them. Plutarch acknowledges that the Cyrenaic view eventually leads to extreme subjectivism, but goes on to show that the thoroughgoing empiricism of Epicurean epistemology can lead to subjectivist consequences too. Arguing that all impressions are true, which is what the Epicureans say, is ultimately not much different from arguing that none is: one's true impressions, which report only on themselves and on eidōla that may or may not be exactly the same as the external object they represent, do not lead one to firm knowledge of the external world.

The Cyrenaics are hedonists who have difficulty finding a stable place in their theory either for one's life as a whole or for other‐concern. Epicurus tries to avoid their problems by his theories of friendship and of justice, with incomplete success. The Sceptics face problems in trying to claim that the Sceptic will be benevolent to others despite achieving tranquility as his final end.

The book's methodology is set out: we must be critically aware of the theoretical assumptions we bring to the study of ancient ethics, or we risk importing anachronism. The limits of the ancient evidence should also be respected. We must also be aware of the structures of modern ethical theories and prepared to find that ancient theories differ. The ancient traditions and their major sources are listed: Aristotle, Stoics, Sceptics, Cyrenaics, Epicurus and hybrid theories.

This introductory chapter talks about the Cyrenaic philosophical hedonists and highlights two aspects of their beliefs. First, many of the Cyrenaics' fundamental beliefs and arguments revolve around pleasure and pain. In particular, they all agree that either bodily or mental pleasure is the greatest and most certain intrinsic good. This could be indicated as formal hedonism. Second, they actually indulge in all sorts of everyday pleasures such as food and sex. In other words, notwithstanding disagreements among members of the movement, in general it is not by sober parsimony or self-restraint that they attempt to live pleasantly. In this they differ (at least in degree) from many formal hedonists, including their competitors and eventual successors, the Epicureans. This is called everyday hedonism.

This chapter examines the significance of all the named Cyrenaics, as well as the culture of ancient Cyrene, and introduces the members of the Cyrenaic movement. The principal figures are Aristippus, their notional founder, who followed Socrates; the mainstream Cyrenaics, who first codified Aristippus' inspirational example; Hegesias, who accentuated the mainstream Cyrenaics' egoistic individualism and introduced pessimism; Anniceris, who opposed Hegesias by reasserting the importance of personal and civic relationships; and Theodorus, an eclectic and flamboyant thinker, who is most renowned for his supposed “atheism.” The chapter traces their history from around 435 BCE to around 250 BCE. Most of these philosophers were born in or around Cyrene, though some are known to have been active abroad.

This chapter addresses the theoretical foundations of Cyrenaicism, which are the positive valuation of pleasure, the negative valuation of pain, and the impossibility of discerning any value independent of pleasure or pain. This is a good example of a topic where chronological analysis descends almost immediately into pure speculation: it is best to treat Cyrenaic epistemology as the shared intellectual property of almost all the philosophers studied in this chapter. Investigating how the Cyrenaics describe pleasure, how they argue for its preeminent choiceworthiness, and how this choiceworthiness is supposed to guide their actions and establish their horizon of care is a good way to begin exploring their ethics.

This chapter explores the greatest controversy in existing scholarship on Cyrenaic ethics, which is the school's “anti-eudaimonism.” On the basis of Anniceris' formulation of the end many scholars have asserted that Cyrenaics are not “eudaimonists,” meaning their ethics does not center on the pursuit of happiness through cultivation of the virtues. The chapter suggests that this is incorrect for most Cyrenaics, and misleading even for Anniceris. However, it has led to philosophically interesting speculation about why the Cyrenaics would reject eudaimonism. Explanations have focused on personal identity, the subjectivity of value, and prudential reasoning. The chapter shows that each of these explanations relies on unsustainable interpretations of particular pieces of evidence.

This chapter turns from theoretical foundations to ideals of happiness. First, it focuses on what Aristippus, the mainstream Cyrenaics, and Annicereans say about education, virtue, and happiness. This analysis shows how their foundational beliefs support a vision of what it means to have a successful life. The chapter then addresses their formulations of the ethical end, where Anniceris appears to have introduced a position that is strikingly unusual in ancient Greek ethics. Happiness is not the end, he says, nor is there any single end for the whole of life. Rather, each action has its own particular end. The chapter attempts a sympathetic interpretation of this innovation, yet acknowledges the problems it creates for other areas of Cyrenaic theory.

Socrates raises some of the basic questions of ethical theory through his question ‘How ought we to live?’, which he takes to mean ‘How ought we to live in order to be happy?’ His answer is that we ought to acquire and practise the virtues. His inquiries reveal that people lack a clear conception of the nature of the virtues. To correct our views, we should recognize that the virtues are inseparable, that knowledge is sufficient for virtue, and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Socrates defends these convictions, in the Protagoras and the Gorgias. Socrates’ one-sided successors, the Cyrenaics and Cynics, develop his arguments in opposed directions.

Eudaimonia, happiness, is a property of a whole life, not of some portion of it. What can this mean for hedonists? For Epicurus, it is made possible by the mind’s capacity to enjoy one’s whole life from any temporal viewpoint: to relive past pleasures and enjoy future ones in anticipation, importantly including confidence in a serene closure. Enjoying your life is like enjoying a day as a whole, not least its sunset. Although pleasure is increased by greater duration (contrary to a more favoured reading), and premature death therefore better avoided, the finitude of human life as such does not lessen its value, and even a premature death need not prevent a life’s being enjoyed as ‘complete’. In this chapter, the above interpretation is documented, explained, and contextualized in terms of Epicurus’ diametrical opposition to his contemporaries, the Cyrenaics.

Examining Aristotle’s intellectual milieu, this chapter argues that the supposedly modern questions about the ‘sources of normativity’ are being asked by Aristotle’s contemporaries, even without the spur of the modern sciences. The challenge to traditional beliefs from materialism, awareness of cultural variations and from sophistic challengers unsettled belief in traditional piety, requiring philosophers to seek other forms of justification. Plato’s work clearly shows a felt need for metaphysical foundations of ethics. The subjectivism of the Cyrenaic school, among others, put pressure on the notion that there is a true good beyond appearances. This chapter notes that—on one reading of the justification for Aristotle’s teleology—he might reasonably have seen the appeal to human nature as an external point of appeal to justify the demands of ethics; the question is whether he did do so.