ARISTIPPUS, the founder of the Cyrenaic sect of philosophy, was the son of Aretades, and born at Cyrene in Libya. He flourished about the 96th Olympiad. The great reputation of Socrates induced him to leave his own country and remove to Athens, that he might have the satisfaction of hearing his discourses. He was chiefly delighted with those discourses of Socrates that related the most to pleasure, which he asserted to be the ultimate end in which all happiness consists. His manner of life was agreeable to his opinion, for he indulged himself extremely in all sorts of luxuries. Though he had a good estate, yet he was the only one of the disciples of Socrates who took money for teaching. Upon his leaving Socrates he went to Ægina, as Athenæus informs us, where he lived with more freedom and luxury than before. Socrates sent frequent exhortations to him in order to reclaim him, but all in vain; and with the same view he wrote that discourse which we find in Xenophon. Here Aristippus became acquainted with Laïs, the famous courtesan of Corinth, for whose sake he took a voyage to that city. He continued at Ægina till the death of Socrates, as appears from Plato's Phædo, and the epistle which he wrote upon that occasion. He returned at last into his own country, Cyrene, where he professed philosophy, and instituted a sect which, as we observed above, was called the Cyrenaic, from the place, and by some writers the Hedonic or voluptuous, from its doctrines.
We have many apophthegms of his preserved. To one who asked him, what his son would be the better for being a scholar, "If for nothing else," said he, "yet for this alone, that when he comes into the theatre one stone will not sit upon another." When a certain person recommended his son to him, he demanded 500 drachmas; and upon the father's replying that he could buy a slave for that sum, "Do so," said he, "and then you will be master of a couple." Being reproached because, having a suit of law depending, he fed a lawyer to plead for him, "Just so," said he, "when I have a great supper to make I always hire a cook." Being asked what was the difference between a wise man and a fool, he replied, "Send both of them together naked to those who are acquainted with neither of them, and then you will know." Being reproached for going from Socrates to Dionysius, he replied, "That he went to Socrates when he wanted serious instruction, and to Dionysius for diversion." Having received money of Dionysius, at the same time that Plato accepted a book only, and being reproached for it, "The reason is plain," says he, "I want money and Plato wants books." Being cast by shipwreck ashore on the island of Rhodes, and perceiving mathematical schemes and diagrams drawn upon the ground, he said, "Courage, friends; for I see the footsteps of men."
Having visited Dionysius the Sicilian tyrant, and lived a long time at his court, his daughter Arete sent to him to desire his presence at Cyrene in order to take care of her affairs, since she was in danger of being oppressed by the magistrates; but he fell sick in his return home, and died at Lipara. With regard to his principal opinions, like Socrates, he rejected the sciences as they were then taught, and pretended that logic alone was sufficient to teach truth and fix its bounds. He asserted that pleasure and pain were the criterions by which we were to be determined; that these alone made up all our passions; that the first produced all the soft emotions, and the latter all the violent ones. The assemblage of all pleasures, he asserted, made true happiness, and that the best way to attain this was to enjoy the present moments. He wrote a great many books, but none of them has been preserved. It has been shown by M. Luzac, in his Lectures Atticae, that he was not the author of the treatise on the Luxury of the Ancients, frequently ascribed to him; nor of the Epistles given as his in the Socratic collection of Leo Allatius.