Aristippus the Younger, of Cyrene

Cyrene, Libya

Cyrene was an ancient Greek colony and then a Roman city in present-day Shahhat, Libya, the oldest and most important of the five Greek cities in the region. It gave eastern Libya the classical name Cyrenaica that it has retained to modern times.Cyrene lies in a lush valley in the Jebel Akhdar...

, was the grandson of Aristippus of Cyrene, and is widely believed to have formalized the principles of Cyrenaic philosophy.

He lived in the second half of the 4th century BC. His mother was Arete

Arete of Cyrene

Arete of Cyrene was a Cyrenaic philosopher, and the daughter of Aristippus of Cyrene.She learned philosophy from her father, Aristippus, who had himself learned philosophy from Socrates. Arete, in turn, taught philosophy to her son - Aristippus the Younger - hence her son was nicknamed...

, daughter of the elder Aristippus, and it was she who imparted her father's philosophy to her son, hence he received the nickname "Mother-taught" (metrodidaktos). Among his pupils was Theodorus the Atheist

Theodorus the Atheist

Theodorus the Atheist, of Cyrene, was a philosopher of the Cyrenaic school. He lived in both Greece and Alexandria, before ending his days in his native city of Cyrene. As a Cyrenaic philosopher, he taught that the goal of life was to obtain joy and avoid grief, and that the former resulted from...

. Not much else is known about Aristippus the Younger. The idea that he systemised his grandfather's philosophy is based on the authority of Aristocles

Aristocles of Messene

Aristocles of Messene in Sicily, a Peripatetic philosopher, who probably lived in the 1st century AD. He may have been the teacher of Alexander of Aphrodisias.According to the Suda and Eudokia, he wrote several works:...

 (as quoted by Eusebius

Eusebius of Caesarea

Eusebius of Caesarea also called Eusebius Pamphili, was a Roman historian, exegete and Christian polemicist. He became the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine about the year 314. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the Biblical canon...

):

Among [Aristippus'] other hearers was his own daughter Arete, who having borne a son named him Aristippus, and he from having been introduced by her to philosophical studies was called his mother's pupil (μητροδίδακτος). He quite plainly defined the end to be the life of pleasure, ranking as pleasure that which lies in motion. For he said that there are three states affecting our temperament: one, in which we feel pain, like a storm at sea; another, in which we feel pleasure, that may be likened to a gentle undulation, for pleasure is a gentle movement, comparable to a favourable breeze; and the third is an intermediate state, in which we feel neither pain nor pleasure, which is similar to a calm. So of these feelings only, he said, we have the sensation.