The Cynics
Tom Price
The Cynics were not ever a school, but more of a counter-cultural phenomenon. They took their name from Diogenes of Sinope (not to be confused with Diogenes Laertius) who was famous for, among other things, going around Athens with a lantern in the daytime waiting for someone to ask him what he was doing; living in a barrel; and masturbating in the marketplace (on the principle that "if it ain't wrong to do it at home it ain't wrong to do it anywhere"). Perhaps the best story about him is the one about his response to Zeno's paradox (that motion is impossible since one must first travel half the distance to the goal, then half the remaining distance, and so on): Diogenes burst in upon the Eleatic school as they discussed the paradox, paced back and forth among them a few times, and left without saying anything. Diogenes' nickname was "Kuon", the Dog, after the general filthiness and nastiness of his habits, and the lesser philosophers and vagrants who affected his teachings came to be known as the Cynics, or Dog-philosophers.
One more interesting historical fact is that the unofficial Cynics' uniform consisted of knapsack, cloak, and walking-stick.
The essential teachings of the Cynics were as follows:
- Autarky or self-sufficiency was the human ideal. It is useful to compare it to the Greek ideal of arete or all-around excellence. Odysseus, for example, exhibited arete: he could build a ship, sail it, command men, flay and roast an ox, shoot a bow, wield a spear, throw a discus, and be moved to tears by a song. He was not a specialist, but a complete man who was equal to any occasion: that is the essence of arete. The Cynic's ideal of autarky should be understood against this background: while arete was commonly associated with a full life as a citizen of a polis, autarky was the ideal of a complete man who needed no one and no organization.
- The distinction between the natural and the artificial values. The natural values are those values arising from the natural state of things, e.g. warmth, health, security. The artificial values are those values arising from the existence of the social order: fashionableness, fame, wealth. The Cynics scorned the artificial values.
- The negative definition of happiness. Happiness was a result of the absence of evils.
There are two possible interpretations of this doctrine (two ways of understanding how this doctrine worked itself out in the lives of its practitioners). First, one might interpret it as paradoxically positive, just as the Buddhist "world-denying" doctrines turn out to be intensely positive in application: the implication of the doctrine being that life itself and the curiosity associated with being are inherently, intensely happy, and that all that is necessary for happiness is to remove obstacles to the full enjoyment of being. Alternatively, one might interpret it as did the Stoics (a coherent school of philosophers, whose teachings developed out of those of the Cynics), at face value: life is essentially value-neutral, extremes of emotion always create more unhappiness than positive happiness, and as a consequence the best thing one can do for oneself is to avoid unhappiness.
Either interpretation is interesting. The first shows a striking resemblance to Zen Buddhist and Taoist practise. The second (which is a fair description of Stoicism, whether or not it matches the intent of the Cynics) looks very much like Buddhist metaphysics without the Buddhist transcendental psychology.
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