Birth of Hedonism (eBook)

The Cyrenaic Philosophers and Pleasure as a Way of Life

Kurt Lampe (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2014
304 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-5249-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Kurt Lampe is a lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Bristol.

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According to Xenophon, Socrates tried to persuade his associate Aristippus to moderate his excessive indulgence in wine, women, and food, arguing that only hard work can bring happiness. Aristippus wasn't convinced. Instead, he and his followers espoused the most radical form of hedonism in ancient Western philosophy. Before the rise of the better known but comparatively ascetic Epicureans, the Cyrenaics pursued a way of life in which moments of pleasure, particularly bodily pleasure, held the highest value. In The Birth of Hedonism, Kurt Lampe provides the most comprehensive account in any language of Cyrenaic ideas and behavior, revolutionizing the understanding of this neglected but important school of philosophy.The Birth of Hedonism thoroughly and sympathetically reconstructs the doctrines and practices of the Cyrenaics, who were active between the fourth and third centuries BCE. The book examines not only Aristippus and the mainstream Cyrenaics, but also Hegesias, Anniceris, and Theodorus. Contrary to recent scholarship, the book shows that the Cyrenaics, despite giving primary value to discrete pleasurable experiences, accepted the dominant Greek philosophical belief that life-long happiness and the virtues that sustain it are the principal concerns of ethics. The book also offers the first in-depth effort to understand Theodorus's atheism and Hegesias's pessimism, both of which are extremely unusual in ancient Greek philosophy and which raise the interesting question of hedonism's relationship to pessimism and atheism. Finally, the book explores the "e;new Cyrenaicism"e; of the nineteenth-century writer and classicist Walter Pater, who drew out the enduring philosophical interest of Cyrenaic hedonism more than any other modern thinker.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.10.2014
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Geschichte der Philosophie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie Altertum / Antike
• Schlagworte: Aeschines of Sphettus • Analogy • ancient Cyrene • Ancient Greek philosophy • Ancient Philosophy • Anecdote • Annicereans • Anniceris • anti-eudaimonism • Antithesis • Aristippus • Aristippus of Cyrene • Aristotle • Atheism • Axiology • badness • Bion of Borysthenes • bodily pleasure • Calculation • Carneades • Certainty • choiceworthiness • Chrysippus • Consciousness • Contradiction • courtesan • Criticism • critique • Cyrenaica • Cyrenaic epistemology • Cyrenaic ethics • Cyrenaicism • Cyrenaic movement • Cyrenaic principles • Cyrenaics • Cyrenaic theory • Democritus • Determination • Dialectic • Diogenes of Sinope • Disposition • Doxography • Epicureanism • epicurus • Epistemology • ethical solipsism • ethics • Eudaimonia • eudaimonists • everyday hedonism • Existence • Explanation • fear of death • Food • formal hedonism • Good and evil • goodness • Gratitude • Greek Culture • Greek ethics • Happiness • Hedonism • hedonistic tradition • hedonists • Hegesiac ethics • Hegesiacs • Hegesias • Historicity • Historiography • hypothesis • idealism • impiety • Indifference • indulgence • inference • Literature • loeb classical library • Lucretius • Magnanimity • mainstream Cyrenaics • mental pleasure • Metaphor • Morality • narrative • negative reciprocity • optimism • Pain • Panaetius • Peripatetic school • Personal Identity • Perversion • pessimism • Phaedo • Philodemus • Philosopher • philosophical heroism • Philosophy • Phronesis • pity • Plato • Platonic Academy • Platonism • Pleasure • Plutarch • Polemic • popular ethics • Posidonius • positive reciprocity • premise • Presentism (literary and historical analysis) • primary source • Principle • Protagoras • prudential reasoning • Pseudo-Plutarch • Psychology • pyrrho • Pyrrhonism • Reality • reason • rhetoric • Rule Of Thumb • Self-Sufficiency • Sex • Sextus Empiricus • skepticism • Socrates • socratic • Sophist • Speusippus • Stilpo • Stoicism • Suggestion • Superiority (short story) • Theodoreans • Theodorus • Theology • theory • Thought • traditional virtues • Understanding • unitemporal pleasure • virtue • Wallace Matson • Walter Pater • Western Philosophy • Writing • zeno of citium
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-5249-8 / 1400852498
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-5249-9 / 9781400852499