** The Cynics

[photo: Alexander the Great visiting Diogenes]

The Cynics: Who were they?

- Ancient school of philosophy founded c.440 b.c. by Antisthenes, a disciple of Socrates. The Cynics considered virtue to be the only good, not just the highest good as Socrates had asserted. To them, virtue meant a life of self-sufficiency, of suppression of desires and restriction of wants. The Cynics paraded their poverty, their antagonism to pleasure, and their indifference to others, thereby gaining a reputation for fanatical unconventionality. After Antisthenes the principal Cynics were Diogenes of Sinope and Crates, his pupil. The Cynics, who survived until the 6th century a.d., influenced the Stoics, with whom they shared some philosophical objectives.

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed., 2004

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The Cynics: The Dropouts Of The Ancient World.

Aristotle's pupil, Alexander The Great, changed history in a way that affected the development of Philosophy. In an astoundingly short time, he conquered more or less the whole world as it was known to the ancient Greeks, from Italy to India, including most of what is now called the Middle East, together with vast areas of North Africa. The independence of the Greek city states came to an end as they were swallowed up in Alexander's empire, and they lost their cultural dominance.

Everywhere he went, Alexander founded new cities, from which his conquests were to be administered, and these he colonised with Greeks. The colonists mostly married local women, so the populations of these cities quickly became cosmopolitan, but their ruling ethos and language remained everywhere Greek. The upshot was that the whole of the ancient world came to be run from "Greek" cities that were not in Greece, and whose population were multiracial and multilingual. That world is known as the Hellenistic world. Its most important city was the one Alexander named after himself - Alexandria - in Egypt. This became the chief international centre of culture and learning, the site of the most important library the ancient world ever possessed. The Hellenistic age of which it was the cultural capital lasted for some 300 years, from the downfall of the Greek city states in the 4th century BC to the rise of the Roman Empire in the ist century BC. During that time, the culture and civilisation of ancient Greece became propagated throughout the ancient world. These were the circumstances in which the Roman republic emerged, and in which the Roman Empire struggled to establish itself. It was also the world into which Christianity was born, and explains why - although Palestine was a Roman colony - the New Testament was written in Greek.

THE FIRST 2 CYNICS:

Immediately after the death of Alexander, his empire broke up into warring factions - so, while the cultural unity that he had created continued, there was incessant strife and conflict at the political level. All 4 of the new schools of Philosophy that flourished during this period - the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, and the Stoics - reflect that fact. All of them are concerned with how a civilised man is to live in an insecure, unstable, and dangerous world.

The first of these to appear were the Cynics. They were what we would now call "dropouts". Their progenitor was Antisthenes, a disciple of Socrates and near-contemporary of Plato. Until he was middle-aged he lived a conventional life in that aristocratic circle of philosophers. But, with the death of Socrates and the fall of Athens, Antisthenes' world came to an end, whereupon he decided to opt out and embrace a basic, simple life. He started dressing like a labourer, and living among the poor, and he proclaimed that he wanted no government, no private property, no marriage, and no established religion.

Antisthenes had a follower who became more famous than himself - a man called Diogenes [ 404 - 323 BC ]. Diogenes aggressively flouted all the conventions, and deliberately shocked people, whether by not washing or by dressing, if at all, in filthy rags, or living in a burial urn, or eating disgusting food, or committing flagrant acts of public indecency. He lived like a dog, and for this reason people gave him the name "Cynic" [from the Greek word "kynikos"] which means "like a dog". This is how the word which we still use, was coined. But its meaning has changed over time.

THE FIRST COSMOPOLITAN:

Diogenes and his followers were not cynics in today's sense of the word. They had a positive belief in virtue. But their basic creed was was that the difference between true values and false values was the only distinction that mattered: all other distinctions were rubbish - all social conventions, for instance, such distinctions as those between yours and mine, public and private, naked and clothed, raw and cooked - all that was nonsense. Diogenes had the same contempt for the distinction between Greek and foreigner - so when asked what his country was he replied: - "I am a citizen of the world," and in doing so coined the single Greek word in which he expressed that thought: "cosmopolitan," a concept for which many have been grateful to him.

There are many good stories about Diogenes. The most famous is that when Alexander the Great came to visit him in his filthy hole and stood in the entrance asking if there was anything that he, the ruler of the entire world, could do for him, Diogenes replied "Yes - you can stand out of my light." There is no doubt that he meant this figuratively as well as literally. It is possibly the most eloquent put-down of worldly values that a philosopher has ever managed to deliver."

- Taken from "The Story Of Philosophy" ~ Bryan Magee.