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Aristippus

Historical Figure
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Founder of Cyrenaic hedonism who taught that pleasure, especially bodily, is the sole good.

Detailed Definition
Aristippus’ pursuit of immediate, sensory pleasure became a poetic counterpoint to asceticism—verse that celebrates the fleeting kiss, the ripe fruit, the warm sun, and finds sacredness not in eternity, but in the moment’s fullness.
Example
Example in poetry:
Aristippus, founder of the Cyrenaic school, embodies hedonism in poetry: "Live for the moment’s kiss, said Aristippus, not the echo"; A decadent verse: "I drink the wine, not save it for tomorrow—Aristippus’ creed in every drop"; A confessional line: "Pleasure is the polestar, even in pain, as Aristippus taught while enduring torture"; A witty epigram: "He sailed to Corinth rich, returned poor, smiled: ‘I still have what I spent’—Aristippus’ economy"
Additional Notes
Aristippus founded Cyrenaic hedonism, advocating immediate bodily pleasure as the highest good, rejecting abstract virtue or future rewards; his radical empiricism and focus on sensory immediacy appear in Hellenistic epigrams and later in French Symbolist poetry, where poets like Baudelaire celebrate fleeting sensations as the only authentic experience, contrasting sharply with Stoic restraint and offering a counter-ethic to moralistic verse.
Also Known As
Aristippus of Cyrene
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