As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion.
Hello and welcome to the blog, I’m your host the Pocket Theologian, and today we’re discussing the Greek cynic philosophy, Antisthenes. If your new to the blog, allow me to explain, I’m the pocket theologian and here on the blog we like to take a theological or philosophical topic and discuss it, anyways let’s get to it.
Cynic seems to come from the Greek word of dog, because they barked at those they didn’t like.
History
So our history section this week is disappointingly short, since Antisthenes lived such a long time ago and was kind of overshadowed by some other philosophers in his day, ahem Plato.
But some details we do know is that he was born around the year 445 BC, and was named after his father, who was an Athenian, and that he fought in the athenian military, specifically at the battle of Tanagra,
Eventually though he ended up as a student of Gorgias, another greek philosopher, before eventually stumbling on the genius that was Socrates. And Antisthenes was very much smitten with the man and his teacher, walking miles every day just to hear him speak, and when Socrates inevitably died, Antisthenes never forgave the Athenian council that killed him.
Just like most Greek philosophers after Socrates, Antisthenes needed a place to meet and teach, his choice was the Cynosarges, which was a gym specifically for Athenian boys who had foreign mothers. Meaning that Antisthenes specifically targeted people who were similar to himself, and he wore a cloak and carried a staff and wallet. His followers soon adopted this style.
Antisthenes is described as having great wit and sarcasm, as a true student of Socrates, he valued dialogues as his primary written work. Which at some point is said to have been around ten volumes large. It is also said, that Plato stole a great deal of Antisthenes thoughts, but there isn’t a huge amount of evidence for this.
Records differ on how and when Antisthenes died, some say he died of natural causes at the age of 70, others however say he was still alive in 366 and that he died in Athens.
Notable Figures… Influenced by
Socrates: Antisthenes is unique as one of the direct students of Socrates, to put this in perspective for our theological listeners, this is like Peter to Jesus in philosophical terms. Antisthenes thought Socrates was right on, both in his heavy criticisms of the Athens elite, and his call to discover what Virtue truly was. With many Greek and Roman philosophers, often calling him the “true” disciple of Socrates, if that can even be said.
Notable Figures… Influenced
Diogenes of Sinope: Much more well known Cynic, the links between Diogenes and Antisthenes are hotly debated and highly suspect but basically Diogenes took Cynicism to it’s logical extremes, and became the archetypal “cynic” philosopher. He wore a robe, lived in an old wine barrel, and held a lantern in people’s faces, “looking for an honest man”, but the most well known story tells of him faking the currency of an entire city because he cared so little for their laws.
Crates of Thebes: Crates is unique in that he is the model Cynic. He gave up a fortune to live the cynic life of poverty, he got married and his wife lived with him on the street, and more over he was the teacher of Zeno of Cinthium, whom long time listeners might remember as one of the founders of Stoicism.
Key Characteristics
Virtue: So to Antisthenes the ultimate perfection of man the ultimate way a man is to live is virtuously. Now remember Aristotle is still several years away, but to Antisthenes virtue is the way a man can know what is right and what is wrong. Notably, Antisthenes DID NOT believe that societal laws were virtuous, but that man alone could determine virtue, and that one was to assuage or avoid all else. Hence why Cynic philosophers often lived in such bad conditions.
Ethics: as an extension from that, once a person decides what virtue is, it is then to guide their behavior.
Logic: So I wanted to make a point of this because I thought it was interesting, but Antisthenes disagreed with Plato on his world of ideas. He thought that describing something as something else isn’t any better than not describing it at all.
Misconceptions
Cynic is not equal to today’s definition: So it’s important to distinguish between the current definition of cynicism, and the Greek idea of Cynicism. So the modern ideal of cynicism is somebody who is skeptical or doubts everything, hence the dubbing of one person a cynic. However in the Greek mind the word Cynic, meant dog-like, and the cynics earned it due to their poor and kind of dirty life style. So the cynics basically created the modern definition of a cynic by their behavior and mentalities, but they themselves didn’t call themselves that.
That he thought that pleasure was bad: This can easily be misconstrued by looking at Antisthenes basic life, living poorly, not enjoying anything, etc. But, he did say in one of his works that the only good pleasure is that “which comes from one’s own soul” and you can speculate on that until the cows come home, but basically he was a “if it’s good for you its pleasurable” rather than a “if it feels good” pleasurable like our friend Epicurus.
Lastly, Cynicism is often seen as the progenitor to Stoicism, and while I explained there are links between the two it is inaccurate to say that Cynicism led to Stoicism. Since the two have some very specific divides that the other does not share. For example, Stoicism DID NOT share Cynicisms more ascetic life style, and Cynicism never achieved the wide spread acclaim that Stoicism did.
That’s all I have for you today… Go in Peace!
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