Cyrenaics
group · 4 works · 10 mentions · 15 anchored passages
the Cyrenaics · Cyrenaic school · The Cyrenaics · all the Cyrenaics · philosophers called Cyrenaics
in the texts
Lucullus
A philosophical school holding that only inner feelings such as pain and pleasure can be perceived, not external qualities like colour or sound.
'What of the Cyrenaics, philosophers by no means to be despised, who deny that there is anything which can be perceived from without, and say that they perceive those things alone which they feel by inner touch, such as pain and pleasure;
What of touch — and that touch indeed which the philosophers call inner, of pain or of pleasure — in which alone the Cyrenaics think there is a criterion of truth, because it is felt?
different that of the Cyrenaics, who think there is no criterion except inner emotions;
On Moral Ends
Hedonist philosophical school founded on Aristippus's teaching, distinguished from and compared to the Epicureans.
For the argument is concluded acutely enough against the Cyrenaics, but is nothing against Epicurus.
Though this is the teaching of Aristippus, and is better and more frankly defended by the Cyrenaics, yet I judge it to be of such a kind that nothing seems more unworthy of man.
For, so far as I can, I shall lessen the contentions, and shall think that all those simple theories of the ends, in which there is no addition of virtue, must be wholly removed from philosophy — first that of Aristippus and of all the Cyrenaics, who were not afraid to place the highest good in that pleasure which moves the sense with the greatest sweetness, scorning that freedom from pain.
Tusculan Disputations
Greek philosophical school holding that unforeseen misfortune causes greater distress than foreseen misfortune.
The opinion of the Cyrenaics remains;
who hold that distress then arises if something has happened unexpectedly.
there are those who think it enough to show that nothing unexpected has happened, as the Cyrenaics — nothing of evil.
Stromata
Philosophical school holding pleasure to be the perfect good, associated with Aristippus and grouped with Epicurus.
Epicurus, then, and the Cyrenaics say the first thing proper is pleasure;
for these say outright that the end is to live pleasantly, and that pleasure alone is the perfect good.
Lest, then, they should be puffed up over this godless cleverness of theirs as though it were a strange new sect, let them learn that it was anticipated by the philosophers called Cyrenaics.