In this chapter, we start off by focusing on Cyrenaic metaphysics: a quite unfashionable topic to address because the general view among scholars is that the Cyrenaics had no real interest in metaphysics. The Cyrenaics are traditionally believed to concentrate only on ethics, leaving aside, if not rejecting, the other branches of philosophy. This view rests on a misunderstanding of two passages by Sextus and Seneca (Sext. Emp. Math. VII 11 and 15 [=SSR IV A 168=T 31]; Sen. Ep. ad Lucilium XIV 1, 12 [=SSR IV A 165]). In those passages Sextus and Seneca explain that the Cyrenaics only apparently adopted a moral approach to philosophy. They effectively reintroduced those branches of philosophy (such as logic, the study of nature and of the causes [=metaphysics], and the study of affections [=epistemology]) that they seem to have rejected by dividing their moral philosophy into these sub-branches.

One may add that Aristotle is historically responsible for the invention of metaphysics as a proper branch of philosophy in the middle of the fourth century BCE, that is, at the time when the Cyrenaics were flourishing. The focus on metaphysics as a proper branch of philosophy is something that only Hellenistic philosophers could have witnessed. It would be inappropriate to say that Plato, Protagoras, Democritus and the Socratic schools had no interest in metaphysics and did not elaborate any metaphysical views.