These
minutes were spoken on 21 January; for another version, go to the unspoken
minutes
The
professor began Wednesday’s lecture by explaining that he sees
Aristippus’ work as a bridge between Socrates and Epicurus. To put the course in perspective, he
mentioned that we will be looping back to Socrates (who is the central figure
of the course) when we come to many of the authors that will be reading, and
that this was one of those cases.
He then turned to the beginning of book II of Xenophon (pg. 81 of the
Loeb Classic edition), where it reads:
In other
conversations I thought that he exhorted his companions to practice
self-control in the matter of eating and drinking, and sexual indulgence, and
sleeping, and endurance of cold and heat and toil. Aware that one of his companions was rather intemperate in
such matters, he said: ‘Tell me, Aristippus, if you were required to take
charge of two youths and educate them so that the one would be fit to rule and
the other would never think of putting himself forward…
After this
passage what follows is immediately seen as Aristippus receiving a
‘boxing’ from Socrates, which leads one to believe that Socrates
thought him to be a student worthy of and in need of guidance.
The professor then turned to the end of 2.1, to the myth of
Heracles, where Lady Virtue and Lady Vice are attempting to persuade Heracles
to follow their respective roads.
The choice is between immediate self-gratification or fulfillment in and
through the course of contemplation.
At this point professor Hutchinson noted that the translation in this
passage was a bit lacking. It
reads (at 2.1.21 – 2.1.23 of the Loeb edition):
A couple of
details: where the translation reads “with high feeding” this is a
euphemism for ‘well built’ or ‘curvaceous’; and where
it reads “stole a glance at her own shadow” this should be
construed as meaning that she was vain.
As an aside professor Hutchinson mentioned that Xenophon translated
Socrates’ homosexual comments into heterosexual comments. Philosophy has on many occasions been
compared to women, but in this case women are being compared instead to the course
of life itself, which results a powerful image.
We then returned to passage, stating that the middle of the
dialogue was not actually about following the path of virtue or vice (ie.
philosophy), but it was instead about whether it makes sense to get into
politics (community). Socrates
thought it did, and Aristippus thought it didn’t. Xenophon was here showing the argument
between Socrates and Aristippus, without actually realizing that he was making
Socrates lose the debate. In fact,
it should be noted that Aristippus does not really lose the argument in this
text, but instead is stopped short by a lecture from Socrates. The theme of the passage was this: is
it more rational to invest in present pleasure or in future well being? To Aristippus the former is attributed
and to Socrates the latter.
We
then turned to Horace’s Epistles, Book 1, Letter 1 (this translation was
taken from the book entitled “The Satires and Epistles of Horace”
translated by Smith, Palmer, and Bovie: pages 165):
By
the words of any one trainer. Wherever the storm
Drives
me in, I take shelter. At times, I’m the Practical Man,
The
heroic, Stoical Man, who takes Part in Life,
And
Care of Truth, and Charge of inflexible Virtue.
At
times, I slip off unseen to the opposite side,
To
fit the world to myself, not me to it.
This passage shows us of
Aristippus’ flexibility, and his general approach to life: ‘to bend
to world to himself, and not himself to the world’.
And
make the most of it, he wouldn’t kowtow to kings.”
Aristippus
turned this around, of course, and replied,
“If
Diogenes knew how to get the most out of kings,
He
wouldn’t have to stoop to soup.” Which made more sense?
Tell
me which one’s expression and action you like best –
Or
better, since you’re younger, let me tell you why I
Find
the sense of Aristippus the stronger. He slipped past the Cynic,
Who
snapped at him as he went by, with the following words:
“I
play for profit, at least; you play to the mob.
I earn
my keep, in order to be fed by a king,
To
have a horse to ride; you say you don’t need a thing
Or a
single person, yet you beg for food and alms,
And
are lower than the man who supports you. My royal road
Is a
much higher, less inferior way – and it’s straight!”
Aristippus made the best of it, no matter what
Color
or form life assumed. He aimed rather high
But
generally proved quite equal to what came along.
And
the opposite type, whom sturdy indifference clothes
In a
single garment which he wears folded over and under:
How
would he carry off a radical change in his life,
I
wonder? The former doesn’t wait for a crimson cloak,
But
throws something over his shoulders and wades through the crowds
And
decently plays either part, as man or philosopher.
The
latter recoils from a fine Milesian wool cape,
More
that he would from a dog or a snake, and will freeze
If you
don’t give him back the tattered gown that says he
Is a
doctor of philosophy.
He had a high income and
stature accompanied by expensive taste.
He traveled everywhere and was a stranger wherever he went. This he deemed better than living in one
place where one was forced to take care of others as well.
At
this point a student mentioned that it was Horace who first coined the term
‘Carpe Diem’: “Seize the Day”. To this the professor noted that there
were indeed traces of Aristippus in Horace’s thought. He then recalled an older popular movie
where the phrase was used, Dead Poets Society, and how the statement easily
appeals to the temperament of a teenager.
The professor then explained that to Aristippus the future has not yet happened,
the past is exactly that, so the present was all that really mattered, in fact
he thought that the present was
the only concept of time that really existed. The man was simply not willing to distort his present. He believed that you shouldn’t
pre-suffer the future and you shouldn’t re-suffer the past. Then,
thinking of raising his child, the professor noted that you are taught at an
early age to be mindful of forethought, but university students tend to take it
too far.
He then relayed a story of Aristippus becoming
shipwrecked. After him and his men
swam safely to shore, he quickly made enough money to send them all home. And when asked why he wasn’t
coming too, he replied that he was having too much fun to leave. The message he sent home with his men
was “when you get your nest egg ready for your children, make sure
it’s the sort of thing that you can swim with to safety”. Moral: the true wealth of your children
consists in their practical savoir-faire.
When Aristippus was told by a father that it is too
expensive to educate his son, Aristippus asked him how much it costs for a
slave, and then explained that if you don’t spend the money now
you’ll end up with two. So
that, in essence, if not educated, his son will be no better than a slave.
Then we turned our attention to book 2, chapter 8 entitled
Aristippus of the handout entitled “Lives and Sayings of Famous Philosophers”
to help further the point of the importance of education to Aristippus. On page four of the handout he read:
Those
who went through the whole curriculum but stopped short of philosophy he
compared to the suitors of Penelope; for though they got to enjoy Melantho,
Polydora, and the rest of the servants, they were entirely unsuccessful at
sleeping with the mistress of the house herself.
And on page
two of the same work he quoted:
To
someone who accused him of living with a prostitute, he said,
“Really? Does it make any
difference whether the house you rent has been rented before by lots of other
people or by nobody?” “No.” “Does it make a difference
whether the ship you sail in has been sailed in before by thousands of people
or by nobody?” “None.” “Then it makes no difference
whether the woman you have sex with has had lots of men or none.”
The passage was used to illustrate
one of the many examples of stories about sex that were attached to Aristippus. This is a man who obviously neither
accepted nor respected convention.
He thought in the opposite of the norm. For example, in being criticized for sleeping with a woman
of ill-repute he would respond by saying that the gifts he gave her were not to
keep her from sleeping with others, but instead to get her to sleep with
him. He instead used pleasure to
guide his life. If you master
snagging present pleasures and staying away from present dangers, he would say,
at the end you will find that your chest will be full of gold.
This
school of thought was short lived.
It died quickly and was rekindled briefly by Epicurus, only to come to
rest in the last of its teachers who was called ‘Deaths
Persuader’. Though this
philosopher believed in pleasure and pain and the Aristippean philosophy, he
didn’t believe that pleasure and pain could be as easily navigated as
Aristippus thought. So death was
preferred because there was no pleasure and pain in death. He was so persuasive that too many of
those who listened to him speak committed suicide.