First steps: Cynicism

I wanted to talk about two other Greek schools of philosophy, Cynicism and Skepticism. In reading about Cynicism, I realized I should have covered the Cynics before discussing Stoicism, since it appears that the Stoics derived many of their ideas from the Cynics.

Of course, cynical has a dictionary meaning, which includes things like being suspicious of the motives of other people, being bitter or resentful, and exploiting the moral scruples of others for personal gain. Not a pretty picture! But, as with epicurean and Epicureanism, it doesn't really give a correct picture of what the Cynics believed.

This article on Cynicism gives a good overview of the Cynics and their beliefs. The most famous Cynic was Diogenes, who slept in the streets of Athens in a bathtub. He was trying to illustrate that people should live a life free of possessions, and that true happiness comes from living in accord with nature. Fortunately for Diogenes, Athens has a mild climate.

This idea of living in accord with nature resembles the Stoic idea of living according to reason (see my earlier article on Stoicism). The Cynics believed that being happy depended on being self sufficient and having the right attitude. The way to achieve this positive attitude and self sufficiency was to disregard the conventional goals of wealth, fame, and power, and to live simply. These ideas were also influential with the Stoics.

It appears that the Cynics weren't popular with everyone, maybe because of their tendency to flout convention. Cynicism today has a negative connotation, and the name Cynic itself means dog-like, which I assume was meant to be an insult. On the other hand, there is a theory that Cynic derives from the name of the school where Antisthenes taught. Antisthenes, who was the first Cynic, taught at the Cynosarges gymnasium in Athens (Cynosarges means place of the white dog).

The Cynics were mostly concerned with ethics, unlike some of the other Greek philosophies which included lots of other topics. Antisthenes taught that virtue and not pleasure was the purpose of life, in opposition to the Epicurean philosophy. This seems like a more useful basis for an ethical theory to me, although there is still room for debate over what virtue consists of.

Interestingly, Antisthenes believed in a single natural god (this was around 400 BCE), and not the many gods that other Greeks believed in.