Cynical Hedonism (1)

One of the first manifestations of a current of thought very distinct from Stoicism and Epicureanism in the 3rd century, in agreement with Stoicism in using dialectic and with Epicureanism in denying Stoic beliefs, but radically hostile to the dogmatism of one and the other, is the continuation, in various forms, of the Socratic schools. Cyrenaism, in particular, took on completely unexpected forms towards the middle of the third century.

It resulted in Hepesias in a discouraged pessimism bordering on indifference. If happiness, as Aristippus would have it, is the sum of pleasures, it cannot be attained; for we see the body filled with evils, whose soul is troubled by sympathy; we see fate destroying our hopes. If it is true that pleasure is our end, it is to say that there is no natural end; for rarity and novelty form it and satiety makes it disappear. What does the state of slavery or freedom, wealth or poverty, nobility or obscurity matter, since none of them promises sure pleasure? With such an end, there is no need to be irritated against selfishness which is wisdom, nor against the faults which necessarily result from the passions: “We must not hate the sinner, but teach him.” Finally, this detachment goes as far as suicide, and it is in a book entitled The Abstinent (he who abstains from food in order to die of hunger) that we see Hegesias develop the theme of the misfortunes of human life 2 3. This thought forms less a doctrine than a series of themes, among which the principal ones are the pessimistic themes of the evils of life and the misfortunes of fate. It is easy to see that there is not a single feature of this teaching that Epicurus does not aim at in order to respond to it in the name of a rectified hedonism based on nature and physics rather than on the observation of human life, as is that of Hegesias; we recall in particular his condemnation of a pessimism that leads to suicide, his doctrine of free will, his aversion to those who make fate an all-powerful goddess.

Anniceris 4 also tried remedies against these discouraging consequences of hedonism, but by using human means; he gave an absolute value to everything that attaches the individual to other men: friendship, family and homeland ties; these are indispensable conditions of happiness. As a true observer of men, he has more confidence in habit than in reason to make man superior to public opinion; it is the bad habits of education that make us weak before opinion; it is good habits that set us free.

Theodore, a disciple of Anniceris, who was exiled from Athens and taught under King Ptolemy I (died 283), who sent him on an embassy to Lysimachus, King of Thrace, seems to have decidedly inclined towards cynicism 5: a wise man so independent that he has no need of friends, so superior to others that he never thinks of sacrificing himself for his country, which would amount to losing his wisdom for fools, so above public opinion that he does not hesitate, on occasion, to steal and even to commit sacrilegious thefts, such is the brazen cynic of whom Theodore paints a portrait; a sort of middle ground between hedonism and cynicism, where pleasure, good for the former and evil for the latter, and pain, evil for the former and good for the latter, both become indifferent. Prudence and justice are the only goods, and the world, the only city that the wise man recognizes. But Theodore, nicknamed the atheist, is best known for having denied the existence of the gods and inspired, it is said, Epicurus; we know nothing of his argument against the gods; but the fact is enough to show us how different his cosmopolitanism must have been from the religious cosmopolitanism of the Stoics.

Such teaching, entirely made up of popular themes, without complicated technical apparatus, foreign to any scientific culture, more desirous of immediate influence than of a patient search for truth, results in a literary form which will obtain the greatest success, that of the philosophical discourse or diatribe, a sort of sermon in which the orator presents to the audience, in an elegant and flowery style, the fruit of his wisdom. We know quite well those of a pupil of Theodore, Bion of Borysthenes, of whom a listener, Teles, wrote summaries which have been preserved for us by Stobaeus. No precise systematic doctrine moreover in this Bion, who had first been the pupil of the cynic Crates, then, after the teaching of Theodore, had received that of Theophrastus. 6