• The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    I was looking through my old stuff and found this essay I wrote on the Cyrenaics. It was, I think, my first sustained attempt to write something on them, when I was intrigued by them but not yet quite a convert. I think its lack of rigor on some key points is amusing, but still I can't help but think something like this is on the right track, both as a reconstruction of the Cyrenaic position and in that it is the only ethics I've read that I've ever been able to take seriously as philosophically rigorous rather than merely evocative or wishful or reflective of current trends in human thought at large or within an academy.

    ----

    The Cyrenaic philosophers, led by Aristippus of Cyrene, are notorious for denying that there exists an overarching moral end, or telos, at which a successful human life must be aimed. They teach instead that individual goods are self-sufficing, and worthy of being sought for their own sake, rather than for their contribution to a higher goal such as eudaimonia; happiness can be nothing over and above the individual goods that make it up, and the former can only be sought for the sake of the latter, rather than vice-versa as is often assumed. The Cyrenaics are also “crude” hedonists, holding that particular conscious episodes of pleasure are the only good, and further that the attainment of pleasure and avoidance of pain should not be sought as future goals requiring long-term planning. Finally, they hold the curious tenet that no one pleasure is better than any other. It has long been noted that these core ethical positions bear an interesting relationship to the Cyrenaics’ subjectivist epistemology, which restricts knowledge to the internal sensations, or pathē, of the individual. In what follows I go further and argue that the Cyrenaics’ ethics are a direct consequence of their epistemology.

    The pathē are bodily motions that give rise to experiential affections in the individual perceiver. The Cyrenaics hold, first, that the perceiver has conscious sensation only of his or her own pathē, and second, that the sole criterion of truth is conscious sensation; it follows that the perceiver has epistemic access only to his or her own pathē. This means that the pathē are unable to report on the nature of anything outside of themselves–if and when the pathē are caused by external objects, the nature of those objects is utterly opaque, beyond the perceptual effects to which they give rise. The Cyrenaics arrive at this conclusion via a reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine that sensation grasps the qualities of sensed objects. Perceptual relativity gives differing reports of the external world, depending on the physical constitution of the perceiver: the same object appears red in the daylight and black at night; foods are simultaneously appetizing to one species and abhorrent to another. It follows that if the nature of the object is what it is perceived to be, then it possesses contradictory properties. Furthermore, because the properties that the senses report change depending on the physical makeup of the perceiver and how it interacts with the object, what is reported of the object is utterly dependent on and defined by the interaction between the two, and therefore the sensed qualities are nothing more than this interaction; that is, they are the bodily movement thereby engendered, which are the pathē.

    Because they are purely experiential, and conscious sensation is the criterion of truth, the experience of the pathē is identical to the knowledge they provide. This means that unlike the nature of external objects, the pathē cannot be coherently doubted, as to either their occurrence or their character, so long as one is experiencing them. It further means that all knowledge is a kind of self-knowledge of one’s current internal state, which the Cyrenaics emphasize by translating third-person reports into first-person parallels, so as to preserve the accuracy of their claims: thus, the unknowable “The object is sweet” is instead rendered “I am being sweetened.” This sort of locution is the paradigm of the Cyrenaic conception of knowledge because it preserves its epistemic authority by limiting itself to experience, while making clear that this experience is subjective, present, and temporary. In sum, the pathē exhibit three key features: (1) they are private, meaning that they inherently belong to one individual, and that no individual can know the pathē of any other; (2) they are incorrigible, and so the perceiver cannot possibly be mistaken about them; (3) they are immediate, in that they exist only so long as they are experienced, and are known only for the time in which they endure. Crucially, any Cyrenaic notion of the good must fall within these strict parameters: one can only know that something is good if it exemplifies the features of the pathē, as the pathē are the limit and the whole of knowledge.

    The Cyrenaics therefore hold that if anything can be known to be good, its goodness must be contained within the experience of the pathē. One might predict that this position would incline the Cyrenaics towards moral skepticism, on the grounds that goodness and badness are not consciously sensed. They instead adopt the intriguing position that as the pathē themselves are either painful, neutral, or pleasant, and as the body in experiencing these three states senses them to be bad, indifferent, and good, respectively, one actually does sense goodness and badness. Hence, the good and the bad not only can be known, but as pathē must be known incorrigibly, so long as pleasure and pain are experienced, since the goodness and the badness of pleasure and pain are nothing separate from the experience thereof. The Cyrenaics thus collapse pleasure and the good, and their doctrine of hedonism falls out of the following reconstructive syllogism: (1) Only what is consciously sensed can be known; (2) Pleasure is the only good that is consciously sensed; (3) Pleasure is the only good that can be known. The specifically Cyrenaic brand of hedonism also excludes the Epicurean notion of static pleasure, in principle–as pleasure is a pathos, it is a consciously experienced bodily movement, and therefore inherently kinetic, while the absence of pain is not experienced as being either pleasant or painful, and so it is indifferent.

    The immediate nature of the pathē prevents them, as particular goods, from acting in the service of a further or higher good. The goodness of the pathē lies in the experience thereof, and since their existence is limited to the time in which they are experienced, they can no longer be good once they are temporally absent, either in their own right or for the sake of anything else–if another good comes along, it too must be an immediate pathos which is incorrigibly good for its own sake, and not because of any past pathos. Thus, a good pathos meets the twofold requirement for being a self-sufficing end: actions are undertaken for its sake, since it is unmistakably good in itself, and insofar as it is good it cannot be undertaken for the sake of anything else. The possibility of a good or telos that applies to life as a whole, towards which individual pathē can or must point, is now thrown into question. If such a telos is only a collection of individual goods, then it can act as nothing more than a label for a series of particular pathē, and so will add nothing to the pathē that has not already been provided by the pathē themselves. On the other hand, if this further telos is something new beyond the individual pathē, then it too must be experienced immediately and incorrigibly: that is, it must be yet another pathos, and so a new particular good that will itself disappear when temporally absent. To posit an overarching good that encompasses all others therefore traps one in an infinite regress: that good will itself have to be particularized, and a new overarching good will need to be posited to encompass it and all the others, and so on ad infinitum. The Cyrenaics’ epistemology thus excludes the possibility of eudaimonia as a telos, insofar as the pathē (and therefore goods) are immediate–it is nonsensical that a single temporally confined good should encompass a lifetime of other temporally confined goods.

    The Cyrenaics’ insistence that the pathē are private and immediate also relativizes goods to one’s preferences by precluding the possibility of assessing good and bad from any other standpoint than one’s own, in the present. We cannot know the good of another, as we cannot undergo another’s pathē, and we cannot ponder our own pathē from the perspective of the past, the future, or eternity, as they exist only for the time that they are experienced. This means that we can only make decisions, hold values, and seek ends that relate to our current desires, and so in each case that we perform an action for some purpose, we must have that purpose presently in mind, and desire its fulfillment as the end of that action. Even if we set our sights on a good such as eudaimonia, this will not allow us the privilege of a “God’s-eye view” of our life or anyone else’s, and so eudaimonia will take on the character of a particular good, wanted for its own sake, but only insofar as it can be preferred by some specific person at some specific time. What the Stoics, the Peripatetics, et al. want–an objective measure of success that depends on no preference whatsoever–is vaporous, in that one will never grasp an entire life in order to judge it as a whole, much less endow it with an essence that will make it happy even in the absence of an agent to live through it happily. In casting the quality of life as a completed whole rather than something to be understood in the present moment as it is lived, the eudaimonist puzzlingly seeks the temporal end of life in seeking its ethical end: “Are you doing well?” “Too soon to know–ask me when I’m dead,” appears to be his attitude. The Cyrenaic epistemology makes such a position unjustifiable, and instead comes to the descriptively powerful conclusion that we can want things for no reason beyond those things themselves, and that we need not evaluate life as a whole to know whether they are good. That something is experienced as good is what makes it good, not vice-versa, and so the goodness of the pathē are always entangled with one’s current situation.

    A major facet of Cyrenaic ethics is the Arsitippan aversion to long-term planning, which ties into the temporal immediacy of the pathē. Arsitippus reportedly rebukes the Epicurean doctrine that life should be planned carefully by balancing future pleasures and pains, because he believes that the future is “unclear,” and so “neither the memory of past gratifications nor the expectation of future ones was anything to him, but he discerned the good by the single present time alone.” Further, the undergoing of current pains for the sake of future pleasures is “most disagreeable,” and so to be avoided. The grounding of this attitude in Cyrenaic epistemology is clear: in the first place, only the pathē are known, and as the pathē are temporally immediate, it follows that the future cannot be known, and future goods cannot be coherently valued; and in the second place, any attempt to plan a course of future pleasures must deviate from grabbing whatever individual pleasures are close at hand, and so necessitate forgoing present things known to be good for the sake of absent things not known to be good. But then arises the problem of how one is to seek particular pleasures at all: John Watson articulates the difficulty well when he says that to exclude planning from the enjoyment of particular pleasures causes us to “reach the dilemma; either (a) momentary pleasure is an end that cannot be reached, or (b) it is an end that comes without being sought.”

    From here the problem surfaces that if the Cyrenaic doctrine of immediacy, and so the Arsitippan remonstrance against planning pleasures, is taken at face value, then the Cyrenaic account of individual goods must either be self-defeating or contradictory. That is, it must either provide no guide whatsoever to action, or it must advise one to seek particular pleasures when they cannot be coherently sought, because they lie outside of pathic immediacy while not being experienced. Certainly any charitable interpretation of Cyrenaic ethics must allow for some modicum of planning, at least from the hand to the mouth–in the accounts of Diogenes Laërtius, Aristippus showcases the character of the model Cyrenaic by attending the court of Dionysius with the aim of acquiring money, while not entertaining any plans to spend it prudently. But it is difficult to say where this necessary modicum of planning comes from: it seems unacceptable either (1) to admit of knowledge beyond the scope of the pathē, since if the future can be known, then the Epicurean notion of pleasure as an overarching telos again becomes tenable, or (2) to extend the scope of the pathē themselves, since then the purpose of limiting knowledge to the pathē alone will be severely weakened. Because Cyrenaic epistemology provides no answer as to how a medium between living completely irrationally and living with an overarching end in mind can be reached, the temporal immediacy of the pathē renders the Cyrenaic attitude towards the future imprecise, and at best it can be said that the Cyrenaic must devote less energy to planning for future pleasures than is ordinarily thought sensible in order to remain consistent.

    The Cyrenaic doctrine that the pathē are private also encourages dispute among which kinds of goods are best. If one can only know one’s own pathē, and the pathē of different people cannot be compared, then how can one justify the claim that any one type of pleasure is superior to another? Further, how can substantive disagreement over what is the best kind of good be resolved? In response to the first question, the Cyrenaic must bid the inquirer to sample various goods for himself–how good each pathos is will then be known incorrigibly, and so anyone experiencing a favored pleasure will know that it is best. But then there comes a serious possibility of divergence between individuals. The Cyrenaics are fond of citing instances of perceptual relativity to demonstrate that even optimal observers (those that are sane and healthy) can be affected in different ways by the same object, depending on their physical constitution; this point easily spills over into the goodness of the pathē. Such a divergence is exactly what we find in the history of Cyrenaic philosophy: Annicerus recognizes goods of the soul as well as those of the body, while Hegesias emphasizes the avoidance of pain, though both begin from the same epistemology. The Cyrenaics are then forced simply to admit the possibility of varying goods for varying people, and from this stems the recognition that no pleasure is inherently better than any other, but that each varies according to preference and frequency. In denying that there is a single overarching good for humans, the Cyrenaics are permitted such a viewpoint without contradiction. In fact, if the Cyrenaics are right to despair of determining a single good for all humans on epistemological grounds, then the conclusion that goods can be pluralistic is a marked advantage for their position, as no consensus on a superior kind of good is required for living well.

    The strain of Cyrenaic epistemology is one that transforms self-knowledge into a sort of self-love, relative yet indubitably certain, isolating yet carefree, egoistic yet unpretentious. The Cyrenaic ethical system, whatever its flaws and inconsistencies, is not a hodgepodge that “can hardly justify its claim to be considered an ethical System at all,” nor is it “merely a set of maxims to justify the careless manner of living of men whose chief aim in life was a pleasant time.” It is rather a rigorous and cogent ethics that follows from principled epistemological doctrines; the Cyrenaic philosophy forms a coherent whole, whose assumptions can be judged by their fruits, and vice-versa.
  • Mongrel
    3k
    If the whole of knowledge is self-knowledge, what about their philosophy?

    Would they allow some realm of the other which humans may correctly perceive to account for the correctnes of their outlook?

    Thanks for posting that. Cool.
  • _db
    3.6k
    Interesting analysis.

    I'm curious, if the Cyrenaics thought that the only thing we know of are our pathe, how did they come to know of this general metaphysical principle?

    Additionally, if all we can know are our own pathe, how can we know what others pathe are like in principle, i.e. pleasurable, painful, neutral?

    How does the Cyrenaic epistemology avoid solipsism, and why does it posit the existence of an external world (one that cannot be arrived at by pathe alone) instead of adopting idealism a la Berkeley?

    For the structure of the world of the Cyrenaics seems to be similar to that of the Kantian noumenon/phenomenon - and yet if all we know of are our own pathe, then any overarching principles (such as the principle that all we know are our own pathe, or the existence of an external reality) seems to be excluded from this analysis.

    Maybe the only thing we can know for certain (pace Descartes) are our immediate experiences (I am experiencing a salty taste, I am experiencing heat, I am experiencing the color red, etc), but it would seem to be the case (unless we are idealists) that any epistemology that limits itself to these incorrigible experiences and yet postulates the existence of a structure to the world outside of our experiences is contradictory, or at least an unacceptable speculation.

    So the existence of other people who have their own personal pathe, according to Cyrenaic epistemology, can only be seen as a sort of ancient behaviorism: "I am perceiving a person who acts as if they have desires of their own but I cannot know if they indeed have their own desires or are even mentally there to begin with". And so we arrive at Cartesian scepticism.

    I think a related (and superior) view imo is that of Wittgenstein's "hinge" concepts, the concepts that cannot be rationally doubted without using these concepts in the first place. They are "extra-rational", providing the basis for rational thought to begin with.
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    I'm curious, if the Cyrenaics thought that the only thing we know of are our pathe, how did they come to know of this general metaphysical principle?darthbarracuda

    If the whole of knowledge is self-knowledge, what about their philosophy?Mongrel

    I've thought a lot about this, and I think these meta-philosophical questions are important. While this is not contained anywhere in the ancient evidence (though the ancients themselves might have considered it, since we've lost almost everything from them), I think the correct thing to say is that philosophy does not grant one any new knowledge at all, and so a certain set of doctrines is espoused as the result of a systematic Socratic inquiry, but at the same time one shouldn't, and doesn't need to, claim that one knows these. There is nothing that philosophy, or theoretical science for that matter (the Cyrenaics were skeptics of physics) can teach you – but it can change the way that you live by performing a kind of Socratic boiling down of contradictions.

    Party of the Socratic ethos is to refuse to live by mere belief and opinion, and to let life be governed by what one actually knows. One knows that particular things are good by virtue of experiencing them, and that sees to be all that is required. How then to state knowledge of the general thesis about the good? Surprisingly, it seems that one way of looking at the Cyrenaic tenets is to disavow that there is any such general thesis (that one would want to claim to know): in the Lives and Opinions, one formulation of their ethical position is that the good is 'this particular pleasure:' a rare formulation of an ethical doctrine in terms of an indexical, specific claim.

    The practice of philosophy, then, is ultimately done ironically, in a sort of apotheosis of Socratic irony. The Cyrenaic responds to questions that are raised on their own terms, and accepting a premise for the sake of argument is not accepting it. In this sense they are close to the Skeptics, except that their different conception of knowledge causes them to conclude that the skeptical position is not possible.

    Additionally, if all we can know are our own pathe, how can we know what others pathe are like in principle, i.e. pleasurable, painful, neutral?darthbarracuda

    The simple answer is, you can't. But I don't think there needs to be any common ground of faculties in order for there to be communication, and the sort of pluralism and skepticism we end up with is one with positive ethical content and not a disappointment that we need to try to circumvent.

    How does the Cyrenaic epistemology avoid solipsism, and why does it posit the existence of an external world (one that cannot be arrived at by pathe alone) instead of adopting idealism a la Berkeley?darthbarracuda

    Solipsism makes a positive claim about what exists, and Cyrenaic epistemology seems not to countenance any existential statements or denial of them at all. There may be a kind of epistemological solipsism to it, but this is not the kind of solipsism that people generally worry about.

    It's also worth noting that in general Hellenistic ethics was not as concerned with societal behavior as modern ethics. It taught about the good life of the individual, and thought about society only in relation to this.

    Maybe the only thing we can know for certain (pace Descartes) are our immediate experiences (I am experiencing a salty taste, I am experiencing heat, I am experiencing the color red, etc), but it would seem to be the case (unless we are idealists) that any epistemology that limits itself to these incorrigible experiences and yet postulates the existence of a structure to the world outside of our experiences is contradictory, or at least an unacceptable speculation.darthbarracuda

    The Cyrenaics so far as I can tell postulate no such structure, and claim to be uninterested in it even if it could be posited, since by definition it would be external and therefore ethically irrelevant.
  • _db
    3.6k
    I guess I'm still a bit confused as to how the doctrine of unknowability escapes itself. We could call philosophy (or any inquiry for that matter) a game based on baseless assumptions, but this itself is a philosophical claim based on baseless assumptions. Any meta-philosophical claim results in us doing some sort of reasoning, some sort attempt to make sense of things. That's what I personally see metaphysics as: an attempt (not a discipline per se) to make sense of thing in the most general sense of the term.

    The simple answer is, you can't. But I don't think there needs to be any common ground of faculties in order for there to be communication, and the sort of pluralism and skepticism we end up with is one with positive ethical content and not a disappointment that we need to try to circumvent.The Great Whatever

    How does it end up in positive ethical content without going outside the bounds of pathe? Ethics is fundamentally concerned with what choices we should make, and this depends on others around us (what Cabrera calls the FEA - the non-manipulation and non-trangression of other people's interests). Without believing that we are justified in believing in the existence of other people, treating others with respect becomes rather empty, like treating your cardboard box with respect because it may or may not have consciousness. It would mean treating appearances as ethically valuable in themselves, which doesn't seem to have the same kind of obligation as would realist interpretations.

    There may be a kind of epistemological solipsism to it, but this is not the kind of solipsism that people generally worry about.The Great Whatever

    But this epistemological solipsism is not pathe-based, or is it? The description of our epistemological and existential condition is necessarily outside of our immediate perceptions. Even if our perceptions gave us some sort of sign (like a divine hallucination that explained how everything works), this perception would still refer to something outside our own experiences - it could be falsely correlated, it could be correlated to fiction, it could be correlated to a half-truth, etc.

    It's like saying we can only see colors - we certainly see red, blue, green, yellow, yada-yada but never do we see the concept "color". It's all appearances, and without prior knowlege (pace Meno's Paradox) we have no way of interpreting any of it, unless we're open to accepting radical subjectivism.

    It's also worth noting that in general Hellenistic ethics was not as concerned with societal behavior as modern ethics. It taught about the good life of the individual, and thought about society only in relation to this.The Great Whatever

    True. With the development of Macedonia came an emphasis in individuality. Before that time, though, there were the poleis of Greece, and political philosophy was much more prominent.
  • Mongrel
    3k
    Cyrenaic epistemology seems not to countenance any existential statements or denial of them at all.The Great Whatever

    So anti-realist. Hmm.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    The planning paradox you mention seems quite damning. Tbh, it seems to derail the whole thing. I think its interesting that you say 'the Cyrenaic must devote less effort to planning than is typically considered sensible in order to remain consistent.' (1) Quite clearly, in order to be consistent, they would have to devote no time, rather than a fuzzily defined less time. (2) what need has the Cyrenaic for consistency? Why strive for that? Why does it matter if he foregoes immediate pleasure for the sake of hitting up someone for some cash?
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Let me be a bit polemical and ask: have you ever heard an addict philosophize/justify himself while high on his drug of choice? He may hit up Dionysus tommorow, in the sober light of day, but thats beside the point, which is right now, which is *this*
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    & finally I think that, if you follow the faultlines, it would be easy to show that being a consistent Cyrenaic is practically equivalent to not being a Cyrenaic (as, of course, is being an inconsistent Cyrenaic). So what's the point?
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    Heh, the planning paradox seems to be almost exactly similar to the one that Freud encountered after postulating his pleasure principle: how to reconcile such a principle to the necessities of everyday life. Freud had to introduce the death drive/reality principle to account for it, which itself introduced a whole bunch of very interesting recursive elements into psychoanalysis, and left him more able to account for a range of neuroses. Is there a place for neuroses in the Cyreanic schema? It'd be an interesting project to compare to the two.
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    Quite clearly, in order to be consistent, they would have to devote no time, rather than a fuzzily defined less time.csalisbury

    Not at all. I think actually that any amount of planning is technically consistent with the position, because any action is consistent with any position, since belief is utterly impotent in that no belief implies any action whatsoever. What matters is whether the sorts of transformations that one goes through in philosophizing cause one to behave differently. A good Hellenistic philosophy amounts to a kind of lifestyle, and in the act of going through the motions of Socratic debate, the foibles of long-term planning might manifest themselves not as theoretical truths but as dispositions not to take part in them.

    Certainly insofar as that planning is motivated by a notion of the good that is contradictory on its own terms, the sort of crash and burn that comes with the disappointment of inquiring into it can effect change. Certainly that's not guaranteed, but then nothing in life is guaranteed, and we don't expect a style of philosophizing to result in unanimous action by its practitioners. Nonetheless, there is a historical trend to the way the Cyrenaics behave, which is recognizable in style as traceable to the philosophy.

    Although in my own life I have to say that in recent years the past and future have started mattering less to me – people can ask what I did last summer or what I will do on the weekend and I can't remember or don't care (so during small talk I just make things up). Maybe some people can't live like that, I don't know. But I don't think philosophy one takes up should be for anyone but oneself.

    have you ever heard an addict philosophize/justify himself while high on his drug of choice? He may hit up Dionysus tommorow, in the sober light of day, but thats beside the point, which is right now, which is *this*csalisbury

    Is there anything wrong with that reasoning? Certainly you now look back at it and think there must be something outrageous about it, or wrong with it. But how is it different from eating when you're hungry and not wen you're full? Is that outrageous too? It seems like denying this sort of reasoning in effect nullifies the possibility of change or action, if taken seriously.

    Addiction is unpleasant, and can't be escaped through reasoning. Better to refer yourself (while sober) to taste and habituation, by taking easy concrete steps that don't involve confronting the addiction itself: throw away the powder, or if you can't manage even that ask someone else to do it for you, etc.

    & finally I think it would be easy to show that being a Cyrenaic is practically equivalent to not being a Cyrenaiccsalisbury

    I think that it doesn't manifest in anything the Cyrenaic knows that other people don't, but that this just demonstrates the impotence of quests for knowledge (and belief). Philosophizing in a certain style does, if the philosophy matters in any way, effect changes on how one acts, including how one decides to philosophize. I'm coming broadly to a meta-philosophical view of philosophy as ultimately ironic: a Cyrenaic responds only insofar as he is questioned, and defends himself on the terms of the debate that get set up, which doesn't involve (unironic) belief in those terms. This is in fact generally how the Cyrenaics literally behave in the stories: someone asks them something, and then they tie their opponent in knots on the opponents' own terms, or say something witty.

    As Arristippus said in chastising Plato for indulging in metaphysics: "Well, our friend, anyway, never spoke like that." And when asked what good philosophy was, he never responded that it was to learn things, but so that "when in the theater, at the very least, you will not be one stone sitting on another." Education and philosophy are humanizing, and inquiry is a quest for skill and therapy, not a culmination in doctrines (except insofar as one is in the irony, whether knowingly or unknowingly).
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    I guess I'm still a bit confused as to how the doctrine of unknowability escapes itself. We could call philosophy (or any inquiry for that matter) a game based on baseless assumptions, but this itself is a philosophical claim based on baseless assumptions.darthbarracuda

    If we see philosophy as ironic in the Socratic sense, then we only adopt the assumptions we need to on the terms the debate requires. Philosophy is a kind of game, but one that has real and deep urges and pains underlying it (well, some of the time). But we do not need to claim this about philosophy so much as come to embody it by playing the game better than anyone, on its own terms, and in so doing unwind the desire to take it seriously, because the passions that motivate it will have been dissipated by a kind of 'enlightenment' manifested in the Hellenistic approach of sagehood.

    That's what I personally see metaphysics as: an attempt (not a discipline per se) to make sense of thing in the most general sense of the term.darthbarracuda

    What the metaphysician typically is not, though, is a meta-philosopher. He doesn't understand why he inquires or what it means to inquire, or to get an answer. Usually, I think it has to do with anxiety and control. Once the desire for these things diminishes, and the practical incoherence of seeking them is seen to be contradictory on its own terms, the desire to be a metaphysician goes with it. Unless, like Peter Unger, you only do it as a kind of game or profession while thinking it's nonsense in your heart of hearts, which is possible (and I suspect many professional philosophers are like this).

    Ethics is fundamentally concerned with what choices we should makedarthbarracuda

    I disagree, in that I think finding out what choices you should make does nothing to tell you about what choices you will make, which is all that matters.

    and this depends on others around us (what Cabrera calls the FEA - the non-manipulation and non-trangression of other people's interests).darthbarracuda

    It may, come the day that we have technology to mind-meld or mind-control. But until then, the closest you've got is coercion, and responding to coercion is after all not different from responding to threats from the natural world. And in that sense, when it comes time to make a choice, it really doesn't depend on anyone else, you're all alone. Sure you might have to make a choice based on another person's wants or needs, but you've still got to do that (and nothing guarantees you won't, insofar as this really is a choice).

    But this epistemological solipsism is not pathe-based, or is it? The description of our epistemological and existential condition is necessarily outside of our immediate perceptions.darthbarracuda

    No, I don't think so. If there is any existential condition at all, its got to be in your experiences. Or else, it literally wouldn't matter (to you). But then it is hard to see how it is an existential condition.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    I have some sympathy with what you're saying. If the salutary effect of encountering Cyrenaic thought is not derived from realizing it through action but, rather, being transformed by it , then the question indeed becomes: it what way does Cyrenaism transform how one acts? And the only action mentioned thus far is playing the courtier for money. And courtiers knew how to be ironic and trip up other courtiers long before philosophy appeared on the scene.
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    It what way does Cyrenaism transform how one acts? And the only action mentioned thus far is playing the courtier for money. And courtiers knew how to be ironic and trip up other courtiers long before philosophy appeared on the scene.csalisbury

    Aristippus, Arete, Theo the Atheist, Hegesias, and so on, all provide evocative portraits of ancient sages, who each had their reported virtues and bizarre quirks. They are all recognizably from the same school in their way, but no one would mistake one for the other. If the track record of a philosophical school is the people it produces, then it has a pretty solid lineup (as do many Hellenistic schools, in contrast to analytic and continental philosophy, which do not produce character of any identifiable sort).

    There were undoubtedly many more such characters, whose lives have been lost to time.

    Also regarding the temporal paradoxes, I guess I should say that time in this sense only matters insofar as it's lived time, and I seriously doubt lived time is actually linear in the way that seems to be required for these planning paradoxes to make sense. I'm sympathetic to the Husserlian idea that the temporal in the crude linear sense is derivative of a deeper atemporal lived moment, which 'changes' not in the sense of passing, but in the sense of a deeper undergoing. But this all appeals to notions outside the scope of the Cyrenaic philosophy.
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k


    I'm not so sure. Any instance planning occurs in the present, so I'd say it would be encompassed with pathe. I think the planning paradox is an illusion generated by considering life in terms of a "God's eye view." It's only the future gains which result from a plan which cannot that are an issue. Only when tell ourselves: "I planning only to obtain a future" is there a problem.

    We've tricked ourselves into thinking the ethic and plan has nothing to do with our present, when it's entirely a response of the moment-- one only plans so long as they are in the present of doing do.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Mmm, well it seems like it comes down to likeability in that case. It's interesting you mention not only their quirks but their virtues, though I'm not sure what you mean by the term. I know the people I like most are very funny, with a deep capacity for irony, yet able to drop the irony when shit gets real. In other words, it has nothing to do with their philosophy, really, except insofar as philosophy is secondary for them. (Which, incidentally, is why I think Barthelme, Proust, Beckett etc. are far greater than any philosopher, besides maybe Socrates.) Anyway, regarding temporality, I think I agree, though I still don't know quite how I'd put it. From what I know of Husserl, it's still too tied to a false profundity (or a glimpse of something true that a need for a certain kind of profundity has significantly obscured). It's the same reason Heidegger's turn to poetry strikes me as right, but far too clumsily executed.
  • Janus
    16.4k

    The idea that pleasure is the only "good" that is sought for its own sake seems entirely unconvincing; in fact I would go further; I don't think it even makes sense. Judging from your depiction of them, the Cyreniacs only allow for immediate pleasure as the good. But that begs the question as to what is immediate in this context? How long does, or can, immediacy last?

    Hypothetically speaking, would the Cyreniac consent to being hooked up to a 'pleasure machine' that took care of all bodily needs and delivered a state of constant high pleasure? If not, why not? To anticipate a possible objection, you might say that the Cyreniac will not plan something like that because s/he does not allow for identity through time, and so will have no investment in securing constant pleasure for the future self. But then, if s/he were hooked up to such a machine it seems s/he would, to be consistent allow no thought that h/she might be wasting life to convince her/him to disconnect, as long as the state of great pleasure lasted.

    It is more consistent with my observations of people that the only good that is sought for its own sake is rather eudamonia, considered simply as happiness, self-satisfaction, contentment or a general feeling of well-being and peace. If immediate pleasure were the "good' generally sought for its own sake; why would we not encounter many more hedonists than we do? In any case, a life of constant pleasure would seem to be, in most cases at least, entirely incompatible with eudamonia thus considered.

    I don't know anything much at all about the Cyreniacs, so my criticisms are based entirely on the account you have given here.
  • Janus
    16.4k
    (Which, incidentally, is why I think Barthelme, Proust, Beckett etc. are far greater than any philosopher, besides maybe Socrates.)csalisbury

    Seriously??? Far greater what? Philosophers? Writers? Human beings?
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Why are you outraged?
  • Janus
    16.4k


    Me???? Outraged?????? ;)
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    Judging from your depiction of them, the Cyreniacs only allow for immediate pleasure as the good. But that begs the question as to what is immediate in this context? How long does, or can, immediacy last?John

    This rhetorical move is a little weird in that you have introduced the term 'immediate' and then demanded of me what to make of it. But I don't know, because you said it, not me.

    To make things as clear as possible: pleasure is good because it feels good: to be pleasant is to feel good (these are semantically synonymous). So pleasure is good precisely as long as it's being experienced, but since pleasure is just that experience, it's good so long as it exists.
  • Janus
    16.4k


    Yes, fair enough. I introduced "immediate" because my understanding (derived from something you have written previously I'm pretty sure) is that the Cyreniacs don't allow for any persistence of identity across time at all; which would seem to make the idea of seeking even momentary pleasure unintelligible unless you posit some kind of extended present (and even then??).

    Once you allow that we can seek pleasure even across the shortest time frames; there would seem to be no reason, in principle, why the time frame could not be extended indefinitely allowing us to, more prudently, seek eudamonia across an entire lifetime; rather than fleeting momentary pleasures, the seeking of which may cause, not eudamonia, but dissatisfaction, to rule across the whole of life.
  • Janus
    16.4k


    No, seriously, I just want to understand your thought process in considering those you mentioned to be "far greater", is all.
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    is that the Cyreniacs don't allow for any persistence of identity across time at allJohn

    Some scholars have argued this, but I don't think there's any textual evidence for it. If you want to go that way, that's a possibility, but I don't think it's necessary. I think the deeper point is that time is kind of a red herring. At any given time, you'll have what you want to do, so the issue of how much time to allow for or strive for never really arises. Your whole live is lived in a single instant, basically.

    in principle, why the time frame could not be extended indefinitely allowing us to, more prudently, seek eudamonia across an entire lifetimeJohn

    You can do whatever you want, but your life won't be any better for it. How long you live doesn't matter, what matters is what's going on now, since that's where you always are. You can have an opinion that doing certain things in the past made you better somehow in the sum total, but that's just an opinion, which is equally good as the opposite opinion, with no evidence ever to show it was better. And in philosophy we're interested in knowing, not opinion (since anyone can have an opinion, and any opinion is as good as any other).
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    I agree with tgw (& hoo over on another thread) that the will-to-philosophize stems ultimately from dimly understood pains, desires, and anxieties. Most Philosophy seems to have the purpose of shaping and sharpening one's conception of the world in order to keep it within the limits of cognition - in other words, in order to keep it at arms length. Most philosophy is really just clunky poetry resulting from the poet's immense self-limitation.The writers I've mentioned are able (1) to see philosophy for what it is (the irony tgw spoke of) but also (2) since they understand what it is, they can also use it as a theme to be interwoven with other themes. Basically their scope is much greater (& they have much better senses of humor)
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    The two smokescreens philosophers tend to use today are clear-headed devotion to truth for truth's sake (analytic) and political engagement (contintental). Both self-identifications obscure what's really going on.
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    If analytical philosophy is a genre of poetry, I don't think the people practicing it are necessarily worse-off. There's a banality to writing that has no formal chops as well.
  • Janus
    16.4k


    Fair enough, I suppose; but for me that's a one-sided psychologically based story; right enough from its own perspective, but severely limited by its own fashionable presuppositions.

    So, I see the stances of those writers you mentioned as being very self-conscious postures (in the sense that they result from a more or less pathological state of self-consciousness, not in the sense that they are conscious of their own status as postures). This doesn't mean they are not great writers (I love Beckett's and Proust's works, although I haven't read the other one), but I certainly don't think they are masterful philosophers, by any stretch.

    Although I don't think an adequate account of the urge to philosophize (or write poetry) can be given in psychological terms, when it comes to the kind of irony TGW refers to; I think that can be adequately accounted psychologically in terms of generalized pessimism and disaffection; it is a kind of offhanded pose of dismissive leveling that is motivated by self-protective impulses that contract rather than expand both the understanding and the being. Anyway that's my opinion, for what it's worth. :)
  • Janus
    16.4k


    I wouldn't agree that those orientations "obscure what's really going on"; I think they both reveal aspects of whats going on that would otherwise not be seen as clearly, or perhaps not at all. But I would agree that they are both confined to being mere aspects of the whole picture.

    But, again I suspect you are aiming at the psychological, at the unconscious, when you talk about "what's really going on". I would agree that the psychological perspective provides another limited window, but not that it could ever exhaustively give account of "what is really going on".
  • Janus
    16.4k


    Apparently I was mistaken about getting the idea there is no identity across time for the Cyreniacs from you then.

    It's true that at any time we have what we want to do; but that "wanting' can be more or less constrained by a more less comprehensive view of the whole life.

    I don't believe there are any "single instants"; that is a myth of the analytic mind.

    Also, I certainly agree that you can do what you like, but I disagree that your life cannot be any the better or worse depending on what you do; that proposition just seems absurd to me. I think we can certainly have more than mere arbitrary opinions about such things; we may have reliable intuitions. You can trust intuitions and temper their reliability by experiment and inquiry or you can simply reject the possibility that you could have reliable intuitions. Such a rejection, though, certainly would be merely an opinion. since it certainly could not be a reliable intuition. ;)

    Surely according to the Cyreniacs there could not be any knowing, other than the brute knowing of immediate affect (and given that there seems to be good reason to think that affect itself is never brute, but is conceptually mediated, I would say that even that must be considered to be questionable).
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    But it would be absurd to say Proust or Beckett have no formal chops
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