Aristipus (435-355) was also a student of Socrates. Originally from Cyrene on the north coast of Africa, he returned there to found his own school, where he taught the philosophy of hedonism (from the Greek word for pleasure). Hedonism is very simple: Whatever we do, we do to gain pleasure or to avoid pain. Pleasure is the only good, and the achievement of pleasure the only virtue. Morality is only a matter of culture and customs and laws, something we now call ethical relativism. Further, science, art, civilization in general, are good only to the extent that they are useful in producing pleasure.

Note, however, that Aristippus also taught that some pleasures are higher than others, and that we should be slaves to none of them. He was equally cheerful in good times and in poverty, and despised useless displays of wealth.

He and his students lived as a part of a commune-like school where all practiced what they preached, including free love, more than 2000 years before Woodstock! Women were the full equals of men, and not only hypothetically: His daughter Arete succeeded him in leadership of the school and commune. She wrote 40 books herself and was honored by the city of Cyrene with the title “Light of Hellas.*”