Aristippus 435 BC – 356 BC

Aristippus of Cyrene was a Greek philosopher and the founder of the Cyrenaic school. A pupil of Socrates who reacted in a very different direction from Plato, he held that the goal of life is the immediate pleasure of the present moment and that all knowledge derives from inner sensations rather than from anything beyond them. He spent much of his career at the court of Dionysius of Syracuse and was famous for an ironic detachment from circumstance, taking pleasure when available and accepting hardship when it came. His school, carried on by his daughter Arete and grandson Aristippus the Younger, anticipated themes later developed by Epicurus.