Hegesias: The Greek Philosopher Whose Lectures Caused Mass Suicides

Hegesias of Cyrene was the philosopher whose extremist pessimism led to a royal ban. Credit: Greek Reporter archive

Most Ancient Greek philosophers were focused connected however to unrecorded a bully beingness and the pursuit of happiness, oregon eudaimonia, arsenic they called it successful Greek. But past determination was Hegesias. Commonly remembered arsenic “the Death Persuader,” it is often claimed that helium was the astir unsafe intelligence of the Hellenistic era. The crushed was elemental yet gruesome. His marque of pessimism was truthful convincing it really generated a question of suicides successful past Alexandria.

While his nonstop dates of commencement and decease person been mislaid to history, the philosopher Hegesias flourished astir 290 BC. Hegesias began his travel successful doctrine with the modular teachings of the Cyrenaic school, an ultra-hedonistic subdivision of Ancient Greek doctrine founded successful the 4th period BC by Aristippus of Cyrene, a pupil of Socrates. Its halfway content was that immediate, carnal pleasance is the ultimate bully and eventual extremity of quality life, prioritizing present-moment pleasance implicit aboriginal readying oregon intelligence tranquility.

Hegesias warped these beliefs into thing wholly bleak, drastically changing its foundations. Rather than pointing retired that beingness is tough, helium utilized cold, relentless logic to reason that beingness was fundamentally pointless. The pain, helium reasoned, volition ever outweigh those few, fleeting moments of pleasance that defined the Cyrenaic school. This is wherefore his nickname, Peisithanatos, was a literal statement of what helium did to the young Egyptians of the Hellenistic epoch who showed up to perceive him speak.

Archaeological tract of Cyrene. Credit: Giovanni Boccardi cc by-sa 3.0

Hegesias took a extremist displacement to nihilism

To comprehend his little but profound impact, we person to look astatine his roots. The Cyrenaic school, founded by Aristippus, focused astir exclusively connected chasing immediate, carnal pleasure. Hegesias, however, drove that doctrine consecutive disconnected a cliff. He became truthful profoundly disillusioned that the pursuit of joyousness morphed into a frantic flight from pain.

Happiness, helium argued, is simply a full fever dream. In practice, our bodies are perpetually breaking down oregon hurting, and our minds are forced to transportation that value close on with them. He adjacent wrote a publication (sadly mislaid to time) called Apokarteron (The Man Who Starves Himself). From what is known from secondary sources, it revolved astir a feline who actively fasted to decease and took the clip to explicate to his friends wherefore dying is really amended than living. This was the calculated endgame of a thinker who genuinely believed the lone rational mode to beryllium was a total, icy indifference to whether you woke up the adjacent morning.

Why Ptolemy stepped in

You tin astir apt ideate what happened next. His lectures were bizarrely charismatic, and they sparked what we would telephone a nationalist wellness situation today. Young men were taking his words to bosom and actively seeking the “painless” exit helium talked about. It got truthful atrocious that King Ptolemy II Philadelphus really had to measurement in.

In a beauteous uncommon determination for the past world, the King banned Hegesias from teaching and yet kicked him retired of the metropolis altogether. This was a fascinating humanities parallel to the arguments we inactive person contiguous astir escaped code and nationalist safety. Think astir Socrates, for example. He was executed for “corrupting” the younker with tricky motivation questions. Hegesias, connected the different hand, was exiled due to the fact that his logic was virtually putting his assemblage successful contiguous danger. Ptolemy’s prohibition had thing to bash with a tyrant flexing his governmental muscle. It was a hopeless determination of the Hellenistic authorities of Egypt to halt a booming metropolis from bleeding its young citizens dry.

It’s hard not to gully parallels with Hegesias to our ain world. Whenever things get socially unstable, extremist pessimism has a mode of creeping backmost into the mainstream. You tin gully a consecutive enactment from the Death Persuader to aboriginal thinkers specified arsenic Schopenhauer, oregon adjacent to today’s antinatalist movements, which reason that it is morally incorrect to bring kids into a satellite afloat of suffering.

Looking astatine Hegesias’ life, we tin spot that intelligence wellness struggles and the contagious quality of sheer despair aren’t modern problems. They person been portion of quality beingness astir apt since the opening of our existence.