Lucian's satire or philosophy on sale

Famous philosophers and their conceits became the target of Lucian's satirical verve in many of his works. However, in Philosophies for Sale (Auctio Vitarum), Lucian offers an original view of philosophy. Just like a marketing expert would, Lucian treats philosophy as a product that is designed to satisfy the customers' needs, and whose nature is decisively influenced by consumer forces. My discussion is inspired by the main analytic tools and the basic core concepts of marketing. I argue that in Philosophies for Sale Lucian revolutionized the established concept that philosophy as well as human sciences in general are not governed by market rules. On the contrary, he has shown that philosophy, just like any other activity involving a trade of values between two parties, can be assessed from an economic perspective and that, consequently, must be viewed as customer-creating value satisfactions, being subject to the law of supply and demand.

It would certainly shock many of Lucian's commentators and readers that his works can be plumbed for philosophic purposes, much less economic insight. After all, Lucian is typically classified as a satirist who specialized in the comedic-dialogue form to deride the foibles and Any structural change taking place at an economic, social or political level presupposes ability to act, knowledge and skills, that is, it requires a particular strategy. And for any strategy to be successful, it is necessary to make adequate use of the means available to us so as to be able to obtain maximum return. The very first and ultimate aim of a strategy is to obtain tactical results which are assessed in terms of efficacy.
Marketing strategy is customer-oriented, rather than product-oriented. For the marketing strategists, The difference between marketing and selling is more than semantic. Selling focuses on the needs of the seller, marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller's need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering, and finally consuming it. Most important, what it offers for sale is determined not by the seller but by the buyer. The seller takes his cues from the buyer in such a way that the product becomes a consequence of the marketing effort, not vice versa." 2 Marketing core concepts may be summarized as follows ( Figure 1 "Demands are wants for specific products that are backed up by an ability and willingness to buy them." "Wants become demands when backed up by purchasing power. Many people want a Cadillac; only a few are able and willing to buy one" 7 .
The products are the motive for the transaction.
Kotler defines products broadly to cover "anything that can be offered to someone to satisfy a need or want." There are physical products (e.g. an automobile, a television set) and intangible, abstract ones (places, activities, ideas). Separately or all together, they are designed to satisfy the customers' needs.
The so-called "marketing myopia" consists in giving preference to the product itself over the services it provides to the consumer. There are obviously some products that offer at the outset more guarantees than others and that provide consumers with immediate satisfaction. Economists distinguish between "search goods", "experience goods", and "credence goods". A search good is "anything whose characteristics and quality can be examined at the point of purchase" as nails and two-by-fours; an experience good is anything "whose true nature can be discovered only after purchase". Examples of experience goods include food and used cars. Contrarily, the quality or the truth value of a credence good "cannot be readily settled either before or after someone invests in it" 8 .
Philosophy belongs to this last category, because the customers can never really tell whether they had the return of their investment, that is to say, whether they received the product they bargained for.
The consumers have at their disposal a number of products that might satisfy a given need. These alternatives constitute their product choice set. However, each product has a different capacity to satisfy different needs. These are called their need set. On the other hand, the product choice is oriented by the concepts of value, cost and satisfaction. "Value is the consumer's estimate of the product's overall capacity to satisfy, his or her needs". However, this variable is closely con-nected to other variables, such as cost. Therefore, the consumer will consider the product's value and price before making a choice. He will choose the product that presents a more favorable ratio between cost/quality. "Exchange is the act of obtaining a desired product from someone by offering something in return". A transaction consists of a trade of values between two parties. In order that a transaction takes place, an agreement must have been reached.
Consequently, transaction also presupposes the process of trying to arrive at mutually agreeable terms, that is to say, to a negotiation. This means that, in the most generic sense, the marketer is seeking "to elicit desired responses to some object from a target audience" 9 ; these responses are intermingled with a network of behavioral relationships with the other part. This is called social marketing. Social marketing attempts to determine the dynamics and nature of the exchange behavior in social relationships 10 .
A market consists of all the potentials customers sharing a particular need or want who might be willing and able to engage in exchange to satisfy that need or want. "Economists use the term market to refer to a collection of buyers and sellers who transact over a particular product or product class"

.
A marketer is someone seeking a resource from someone else and willing to offer something of value in exchange. "The marketer is seeking a response from the other party, either to sell something or to buy something. The marketer, in other words, can be a seller or a buyer" 12 . Selling benefits is one of the main tasks of marketers, whose function is not that of creating needs but rather of emphasizing that certain products might satisfy buyers' needs or (material and spiritual) wants. The consumers' satisfaction is the ultimate goal of the marketer.
Marketing management is, thus, the process which focuses on working with markets (through planning, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services), in order to create exchanges that fulfill both individual and organizational goals and needs. Marketing management is essentially demand management 13 .
The goals//aims of marketing are: 1. to persuade the customer that the brand being sold is the best.
2. to persuade the customer that the present product on sale is the best. 3. to persuade the buyer that our product is the one that best satisfies his/her needs. 4. to persuade the customer that the need satisfied by our product is the most important one. In short, it can be said that marketing does not create needs, it sells benefits. Modern theories of consumer-choice behavior indicate that a buyer's purchase decisions are highly influenced by the buyer's cultural, social, personal, and psychological factors. As Kottler notes, "Cultural factors exert the broadest and deepest influence on consumer behavior." 14 (Figures 2 and 3).  According to Maslow, human needs are arranged in a hierarchy, from the most pressing to the least pressing. In their order of importance, they are physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs.
Lucian's economic insight reveals a keen understanding that the philosophy industry is a customer-satisfying process, and that to produce eager followers/customers in vast numbers, the entire corporation must be viewed as customer-creating value satisfactions. As a marketer theorist would do, Lucian treats philosophy as a product that is capable of delivering satisfaction of a want or need. But, in general terms, which needs are satisfied by this product? The answer to this question may be found in Hermotimus, the other dialogue that complements Lucian's economic perspective of philosophy.
The study of philosophy aims at reaching the truth and, ultimately, obtaining true happiness. However, Part of what makes individuals overpay for the truth claims of elaborate philosophies is that they are not simply concerned about reaching the truth. They pay more in the hope of obtaining additional goods not necessarily consistent with the truth. Among these goods is firm conviction in a set of opinions that absolutely withstand future contingencies. Another is the gratification of pride, manifest in the longing to distinguish oneself from the common run of humanity. 15 On the other hand, the study of philosophy is a risky asset, once it "constitutes an investment in human capital in which the costs are immediate and certain, whereas the benefits are delayed and uncertain." 16 So, philosophical allegiances are costly to reverse. As we said before, philosophy's risk is accentuated by its being a credence good.  The other two, promoted as a package deal, are announced as being "the one from Abdera who laughs" (13,2) (i.e. Democritus of Abdera, the propounder of the atomic theory, which claims that the physical world is made up of an infinite number of atoms that move randomly through the void) and "the one from Ephesus who cries" (13,3) (i.e. Heraclitus of Ephesus) who holds that fire is the first principle, and that everything continually changes. So, as Democritus claims, the world appears to be a combination of opposing forces, the so-called "harmony of opposite tensions".
Despite being announced by Hermes as "the two best philosophies.., the two that are sagest of all" (13,(5)(6), the despise the former shows for human beings that he considers laughable, being nothing more than atoms, and the latter's pessimistic worldview, particularly when predicting great conflagrations and the collapse of the universe 21 , combined with his enigmatic discourse, offer little consolation to mankind. No wonder, then, that the buyer believes that nobody in his right sense will buy any of those theories.
Socrates, who is also the spokesman of the Platonic philosophy, is the figure behind the model that comes next. This model is pictured as "a righteous and intelligent philosophy, the height of sanctity" (15, 3-4), an obvious allusion to the philosopher's integrity and character -Socrates declined the chance to escape Athens given to him by his disciple Criton in order to keep true to the moral law that had always guided him. Coming from the founder of ethics, this unity of thought and action undoubtedly enhances credibility and vouches for the high quality and value of Socrates' teachings, attracting a large group of supporters and followers.
Also relevant is the erotic component of the Socratic/Platonic philosophical system, especially Socrates' confessed pederastic inclinations. However, as it is mentioned, this inclination should be seen from a broader perspective of the quest for truth where the erotic activity is purely spiritual, being based more on love and attraction for the soul than for the body. This puts the prospective buyer's mind at rest as his son belongs to that large demographic group of philosophy's consumers mainly made up of young men who aim to acquire lasting knowledge through the philosophers' teachings. There is a great chance to obtain return for that investment in education given the fact that the potential philosophers are young adults. This fact not only justifies that investment but it also ensures that human capital will become profitable.
Two of the most remarkable/best-known features of the Socratic/Platonic philosophy are also mentioned: the ideal state described in Plato's Republic and the theory of ideas, both of which are perceptible only to an elite that aims at human excellence and at acquiring notoriety and fame, that is, to philosophers and politicians.
The Academic/Socratic model has got all it takes to achieve marketing success and, indeed, it as they want to be able to support and justify their action on a theoretical level, they wield the greatest potential purchasing power in the philosophy market.
In turn, "philosophers would be tempted to supply political counsel, given the opportunity to gain access to government resources, to enhance the credibility of their theories, and to acquire fame."