Aristippe de Cyrène
The only good is present pleasure; the past is gone and the future is not yet.
Life
Greek philosopher from Cyrene, a pupil of Socrates and founder of the Cyrenaic school. For him pleasure is the good, but the wise person stays master of pleasures instead of their slave. His writings are lost: he is known mostly through the anecdotes in Diogenes Laertius.
In his own words
« I have [Lais], but I am not had by her; for the best thing is to master pleasures and not be defeated by them, not to refrain from using them. »
ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔχομαι· ἐπεὶ τὸ κρατεῖν καὶ μὴ ἡττᾶσθαι ἡδονῶν ἄριστον, οὐ τὸ μὴ χρῆσθαι.
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceThe Cyrenaic school holds that we know only our own sensations, not the things that cause them.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, II.92 (3rd c.); Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians I (c. 200)
Only what we feel in the moment is certain; nothing can be known of how things really are.
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians I (c. 200)
The good is pleasure, above all present bodily pleasure, and acts are judged by the pleasure they bring.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, II.86-90 (3rd c.)
Nothing is just or shameful by nature, only by law and custom.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, II.93 (3rd c.)