The Pleasure of Presence

Aristippus’ Ironic Hedonism

Abstract

Aristippus of Cyrene (435-350) was a hedonist, but of a most peculiar stripe. While he identified pleasure as the highest good, he restricted its temporal range to the present. As Diogenes Laertius puts it, he "enjoyed the pleasure of what was present (ἀπέλαυε μὲν γὰρ ἡδονῆς τῶν παρόντων), and did not toil to procure the enjoyment of things not present" (II.66). The goal of this paper is to make sense of this claim.