In the struggle against the religious conception of morality T. Hedonist ideas were widely disseminated during the Renaissance and, later, in the ethical theories of the philosophes. Here they approached the principles of eudaemonism, insofar as the criterion for satisfaction was considered to be the absence of suffering and tranquillity of the spirit (ataraxia). The ideas of hedonism were developed differently by Epicurus and his followers. In ancient Greece one of the first exponents of ethical hedonism was the founder of the Cyrenaic school, Aristippus (early fourth century B.C.), who regarded as the highest good the attainment of sensory satisfaction. As a normative principle hedonism is the opposite of asceticism. Hedonism views the striving for pleasure as man’s basic motivating principle, inherent and predetermining all his actions this makes hedonism a variant of anthropological naturalism. Gosling, Pleasure and Desire (1969).Īn ethical position that asserts that pleasure is the highest good and the criterion for human behavior and that reduces moral demands in all their diversity to pleasure. Click the link for more information., is universalistic in that it is conceived in a social sense-"the greatest happiness for the greatest number." Bibliography , in ethics, the theory that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by its usefulness in bringing about the most happiness of all those affected by it.
Ancient hedonism was egoistic modern British hedonism, expressed first in 19th-century utilitarianism utilitarianism
Click the link for more information. and his school, though accepting the primacy of pleasure, tended to equate it with the absence of pain and taught that it could best be attained through the rational control of one's desires. He claimed to be self-taught, although tradition states that he was schooled in the systems of Plato and Democritus by his father and various philosophers. Click the link for more information., who believed that pleasure was achieved by the complete gratification of all one's sensual desires on the other hand, Epicurus Epicurus
Cyrenaic philosophy taught that present individual pleasure is the highest good. , one of the minor schools of Greek philosophy, flourishing in the late 4th and early 3d cent. Click the link for more information. and the early Cyrenaics Cyrenaics He held pleasure to be the highest good and virtue to be identical with the ability to enjoy. , c.435–c.360 B.C., Greek philosopher of Cyrene, first of the Cyrenaics. Ancient hedonism expressed itself in two ways: the cruder form was that proposed by Aristippus Aristippus Hedonism (hē`dənĭz'əm), the doctrine that holds that pleasure is the highest good.