Cyrenaic philosophy is related to two ancient traditions: the Socratic movement and Greek scepticism. It belongs to the former on historical grounds, since it is one of many attempts made by the intimate associates of Socrates and their followers to endorse his ethical outlook and to explore implications of the principles of his teachings. It fits into the latter by virtue of the close philosophical relations linking the Cyrenaic epistemological views with the two main varieties of scepticism encountered in Greek philosophy, the one reaching back to Pyrrho of Elis in the fourth century bc and the other associated with a particular phase in the history of Plato's Academy.

From the systematic point of view, the Cyrenaic doctrine introduced a form of subjectivism which in some ways appears to pre-announce the subjectivism of Descartes, as endorsed by Malebranche and Hume and developed by Kant. The Cyrenaic conception of subjective knowledge constitutes the philosophical underpinnings of the scepticism of the school, summarised by the thesis that we are unable to know anything at all about objects in the external world. In contrast to the moderns, the Cyrenaics assumed that empirical objects exist and that they act upon us in various ways. Nevertheless, their scepticism, more than any other epistemological position in antiquity, resembles what modern philosophy calls scepticism about the external world.