Status Updates From The Birth of Hedonism: The ...

Aristippus's Hedonism focuses on accepting what the present had to offer. No pleasure is preferable to another, the only pleasure to be 'preferred' are the ones that can be had in the moment. This Hedonism is Epicureanism minus the asceticism.

And so the Cyrenaics claim the only end worth pursuing in life is pleasure. For virtue and happiness are not things we can know we are experiencing, as they are concepts found via reason, unlike immediate and undeniable experiences of pleasure and pain. And so pleasure is the best end as pleasure and pain are the only things we can know for certain. Oddly, this same logic could also support pain as the best end.

Cyreniac's thought the only thing we could know with certainty was our own experience of pleasure and pain. Not the why behind it, nor the reasons for our experiences. They were in this sense, hedonistic skeptics. They did not think reason could apprehend the world outside of our own experiences of pleasure and pain. For this reason, they didn't prefer one pleasure over another. For on what grounds could you decide?

'Strong' theory: Aristippus learned from Socrates to argue the way he wanted to. 'Weak' theory: Socrates encouraged Aristippus to be self consistent. Aristippus had hedonisitic inclinations which a Socratic education made more consistent. Strong and weak are basically the same. Note to self: Examine reference to Zeller's work on different Socratics and the 'one sided' element of his ethics they each developed.