Therapeutic Presentisms: A Hedonist and a Stoic in Agreement?

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on two very different thinkers from different periods of time, an early hedonist who belonged to Socrates’ circle and lived until the middle of the fourth century BCE and the late Stoic who ruled the Roman Empire in the second century CE. Despite all substantial divergences – for instance, on the value of pleasure – Aristippus the Elder and Marcus Aurelius shared an interest in presentism, broadly construed as a focus on the present and its primacy, and engaged themselves in exercises regarding the experience of the present. Moreover, in developing their respective positions and the exercises they prescribed, we shall uncover and foreground their essentially therapeutic character.