In Chapter 1 I advocated a minimalist view on the basis of which the Cyrenaics are Socratics because the founder of the school was an associate of Socrates. I have also warned that at a later stage I would give a more committed meaning for the adjective “Socratic” when attached to the Cyrenaics. I do so now in so far as I claim that the interest in epistemology the Cyrenaics clearly had is clear evidence of their Socratic legacy. Socrates' philosophy (whatever interpretation one may offer of it) rests on the assumption that the ethical enquiries that are so typical of Socrates' dialogical activity coincide with an epistemological search for moral knowledge. In Socrates there is an isomorphic coincidence between epistemology and ethics.

THE CYRENAICS AS SOCRATICS ONCE AGAIN

In a fully Socratic spirit, the Cyrenaics conceived of epistemology and ethics as parts of philosophy that are the two undividable faces of the same coin. Both Cyrenaic ethics and epistemology are centred on the crucial notion of affection (pathos), which serves as the epistemological factor for human knowledge and, at the same time, as the ethical key element of human behaviour. In the philosophy of Socrates, it is arbitrary to postulate a predominance of the ethical above the epistemological, in so far as the former presupposes and rests on the latter.