5th CENTURY BC

Cynicism / The Cynics

Aristotle’s student, Alexander the Great, changed the course of history in a way that affected the development of philosophy. In a relatively short period of time he conquered almost all of the then known world, from Italy to India, including what we call today the Middle East and a big part of North Africa. The greek cities lost their autonomy and became part of the empire of Alexander the Great. Wherever he went Alexander the Great established new cities and inhabited them with Greeks. The Greeks married local women and so the cities got a very cosmopolitan character however they maintained their Greek character and kept the Greek language and ethos. So its great majority ancient world was ruled by Greek cities that were outside of the Greek area and its people were from many nations and had many languages. This was known as the Hellenistic world. One of the most important cities then that became the center of civilization was Alexandria of Egypt. It was the center of the world back then for 300 years from the decline of the Greek city states 4th Century to the rise of the Roman Empire 1st century. During this period the Greek language and the Greek civilisation spread to the whole world.Soon after Alexander the Great died his empire was divided into rival kingdoms and although the cultural unity he established remained however on the political level there was continual rivalry and problems. It was from this historical/political background that the four philosophical groups we will be examining developed. The Cynics, the Skeptics, the Epikourians, the Stoics.Their greatest concern had to do with the question – how can a civilised human being could live in an insecure and unstable world.

Cynics – the first to appearUnconventional/ outcastsAntisthenis was the first philosopher among them.

Student of SocrateLived a conventional life until his 50s among the

aristocratic philosophical world of that timeWhen the Athenians were defeated in the Peloponisian

war and with Socrates death, Antisthenis world/life reached its end. He decided to withdraw himself from those circles and start living a more simple life

Dressed as the servants and lived among the poor. He made it clear that he was against the government, personal possession, marriage and the state religion.

The Cynics

Antisthenis had a follower who became more known than himself. Diogenis.

Diogenis refused to go with the flow and purposely provoked people by remaining unwashed or wearing a certain piece of cloth or not wearing anything at all.

He lived in a tab, ate disgusting food and very often would do un acceptable acts in public. He lived like a dog and that is why his contemporaries call him the Cynic – which in ancient greek is Dog,

Diogenis

Cynicism originates in the philosophical schools of ancient Greece that claim a Socratic lineage. To call the Cynics a “school” though, immediately raises a difficulty for so unconventional and anti-theoretical a group.

Their primary interests are ethical, but they conceive of ethics more as a way of living than as a doctrine in need of explication. As such askēsis—a Greek word meaning a kind of training of the self or practice—is fundamental. The Cynics, as well as the Stoics who followed them, characterize the Cynic way of life as a “shortcut to virtue” (see Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book 6, Chapter 104 and Book 7, Chapter 122). Though they often suggest that they have discovered the quickest, and perhaps surest, path to the virtuous life, they recognize the difficulty of this route.

The colorfulness of the Cynic way of life presents certain problems. The triumph of the Cynic as a philosophical and literary character complicates discussions of the historical individuals, a complication further troubled by a lack of sources. The evidence regarding the Cynics is limited to apothegms, aphorisms, and ancient hearsay; none of the many Cynic texts have survived. The tradition records the tenets of Cynicism via their lives. It is through their practices, the selves and lives that they cultivated, that we come to know the particular Cynic ēthos.

Diogenis and his contemporaries ( as the Cynics) were concerned with the distinction that is worth making that of the difference between what is true value and what is false values.

He diregarded the difference between the Greeks and the heathen and when he was asked which city is he a citizen of he answered – I am a citizen of the world/the cosmos.