QuestionsWhat is happiness?The only good is the pleasure of the moment; happiness is merely their sum
What is happiness?Pleasure

The only good is the pleasure of the moment; happiness is merely their sum

Cyrenaic hedonism; the pleasure of the moment; "seize the day" before the phrase

Aristippe de Cyrène c. 435 BC · c. 356 BCThe only good is present pleasure; the past is gone and the future is not yet.
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What it claims

The only good is particular pleasure, felt in the present moment. Happiness is merely the sum of these pleasures.

Why

From childhood we seek pleasure for itself, wanting nothing more once we have it: so it is the aim of life.

The same idea through history
Aristippe de Cyrène380 BCAristippus of Cyrene (c. 435-356 BC), a pupil of Socrates, is said to have made pleasure his only guide. He wrote almost nothing: the doctrine below is that of the Cyrenaic school, which Diogenes Laertius reports six hundred years later.
Épicure300 BCEpicurus keeps the idea that pleasure is the aim, but he rejects the pleasure of the moment: he aims at a calm pleasure, which is the absence of pain and trouble, and he sorts desires.
In short

"The only good is the pleasure of the moment; happiness is merely their sum" is an argument by Aristippe de Cyrène (Aristippus and the Cyrenaics, as reported by Diogenes Laertius II, 65-90 (4th century BC), 380 BC) on the question "What is happiness?" (answer: pleasure). Its claim: The only good is particular pleasure, felt in the present moment. Happiness is merely the sum of these pleasures. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3, P6). AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Aristippus and the Cyrenaics, as reported by Diogenes Laertius II, 65-90 (4th century BC)
Valid with an implicit premise

Aristippus was a pupil of Socrates, and he drew a very different lesson from Plato's. For him, we know only two states: pleasure, a smooth motion of sensation, and pain, a rough one. From childhood we go towards one and flee the other. Pleasure is therefore the aim. But which one? Not the calm of an absence of pain, nor the memory of a past pleasure: only the particular pleasure we feel now. Happiness is then merely the sum of these pleasures, not a separate aim. The text does not set out the argument as premises: the P1 to P7 form below is our reconstruction, from Diogenes Laertius II, 86-90. Note: Diogenes is speaking here of the Cyrenaic school; only passage II, 66 speaks of Aristippus himself.

P1We know only two states: pleasure, a smooth motion, and pain, a rough motion.
P2From childhood, we turn to pleasure without reflecting; when we have it, we seek nothing more, and nothing frightens us more than pain.
P3 · implicit premiseWhat we seek from childhood for itself, without seeking anything more once we have it, is the aim of life, the good.
P4The absence of pain is not a pleasure: it is not a motion, it is the state of someone asleep.
P5The memory of a past pleasure or the expectation of a future one do not give perfect pleasure: the motion of the soul wears off with time.
P6 · implicit premiseIf pleasure is a motion, and neither calm, nor memory, nor expectation is one, then the pleasure that is the aim is the one we feel in the present moment.
P7Particular pleasure is desirable for its own sake; happiness is not: it is desired only for the particular pleasures it gathers.
Therefore the only good is particular pleasure, felt in the present moment. Happiness is merely the sum of these pleasures.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3 and P6, the computer finds a case where pleasure is a motion, everyone seeks it from childhood, and neither calm nor memory is a pleasure, but where we do not conclude that the aim is the pleasure of the moment: one could seek something else, or aim at a lasting pleasure.
With its seven premises, the argument is valid. Without P3 and P6 it no longer is. Without P3, we cannot move from "we all seek pleasure" to "pleasure is the good": a child's inclination is not necessarily a good. Without P6, nothing forbids the aim being a pleasure of rest or memory, as Epicurus will want. The Cyrenaics assert P3 by giving the attraction of childhood as proof that pleasure is the aim (Diogenes Laertius II, 88), and P6 by saying that the pleasure of the moment alone is perfect. This is also where their critics strike: Epicurus and Aristotle attack P4 and P1, Plato attacks the conclusion.
Analogy. Think of fireworks. Each rocket is a burst that lasts a moment, and the evening is just the sequence of those bursts. If you do not watch the rocket going off now, the memory of the last one does not give you the same dazzle. For Aristippus, pleasure is like that, and happiness like the whole evening.

Objections

4

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

E
Epicurus 300 BC · attacks premise 4

Epicurus, who keeps the idea that pleasure is the aim, rejects this point. For him, the absence of pain and trouble is itself a pleasure, a pleasure "of rest". Diogenes Laertius notes that the Cyrenaics do not admit it, and that Epicurus opposes them on this point. For Epicurus, joy and delight are pleasures "of motion", but they are not the only ones.

Cyrène replies
T
The Cyrenaics What the Cyrenaics had already said (Diogenes Laertius II, 89)
For the Cyrenaics, the removal of pain, as Epicurus puts it, is not a pleasure, any more than the absence of pleasure is pain. Pleasure and pain are motions; absence of pain is not one, for it is the state of someone asleep.
The debate goes on (our summary) Both camps agree on the aim (pleasure) but not on its nature. For the Cyrenaics, you must feel something; for Epicurus, being free of suffering is enough and better. The disagreement was famous in antiquity (Cicero discusses it in On Ends II). It concerns the life one leads: seeking ever-renewed pleasures, or calming one's desires to be at peace (see Epicurus' argument).
Plato (Socrates in the Gorgias) 385 BC · attacks the conclusion

In the Gorgias, Socrates attacks a hedonist, Callicles, who thinks that living well means satisfying all one's desires. He asks him whether a man with an itch who can scratch at will lives happily by scratching all his life. Callicles ends up answering yes: such a man lives pleasantly. For Plato, this answer shows that "pleasure" and "good" cannot be the same thing. Aristippus is not named here: this is a criticism of the same family of ideas, not of him.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Cyrène in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) No answer from the Cyrenaics to this passage is in our sources. But their doctrine accepts the consequence that Socrates finds absurd: according to Diogenes Laertius (II, 88), pleasure is good "even if it proceeds from the most unseemly conduct"; Callicles, for his part, does not back down either. The disagreement is thus fundamental: for Plato, a happy life requires order in the soul, not merely a series of pleasures, whatever they are.
Aristotle 335 BC · attacks premise 1

Aristotle refuses to make pleasure a motion. A motion (building a house, walking) takes time and is perfect only at its end. Pleasure, on the other hand, is whole and perfect at every moment, like the act of seeing. So, says Aristotle, pleasure is not a motion.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in -335, after the author's death (-356).
The debate goes on (our summary) Aristotle writes after Aristippus, and we have no answer from the Cyrenaics. Note that his thesis keeps an idea dear to the school: pleasure is complete in the instant. But it ruins P1, which makes it a motion, and it opens the way to Epicurus, for whom there is also a pleasure that is not a motion.
Aristotle 335 BC · attacks the conclusion

Aristotle gives examples where pleasure does not suffice to make a choice good. No one would choose to keep a child's mind all one's life, even while enjoying the pleasures of childhood. No one would choose to take pleasure in doing something very shameful, even with no painful consequence. And there are things we would want to have even if they gave no pleasure: sight, memory, knowledge, the virtues. So pleasure is not the good, and not every pleasure is to be sought.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in -335, after the author's death (-356).
The debate goes on (our summary) This objection directly hits the thesis that pleasure is good "even if it proceeds from the most unseemly conduct" (Diogenes Laertius II, 88). A Cyrenaic could answer that Aristotle assumes what is under debate: that some things are worth more than pleasure. We have no text to confirm it.