The Role of the Páthos in the Philosophy of the Cyrenaic School: Affection and Knowledge

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the question of knowledge as the starting point of Cyrenaic philosophical development and not as a means used to justify the hedonism of the school, separating it from traditional approaches to this problem. The Cyrenaic philosophers assume perception as the source of human knowledge, particularly with regard to affection (páthos). They conceive the páthos within physicalist parameters that are marked by the movement (kinēsis) that falls on the body-flesh (sarkòs) of the perceiving subject. These affections are the only thing that, according to the Cyrenaics, appear as evident (energeia) to the human subject. The characteristics that these thinkers ascribe to the notion of páthos force them as subjects of action and possible knowledge to pay, practically, exclusive attention to the presentism of perception (aisthēsis), thus acquiring the affection a certain category of criteria.