Cynics a classical Greek philosophical school characterized by asceticism and emphasis on the sufficiency of virtue for happiness (eudaimonia), boldness in speech, and shamelessness in action. The Cynics were strongly influenced by Socrates and were themselves an important influence on Stoic ethics.
An ancient tradition links the Cynics to Antisthenes (c.445–c.360 B.C.), an Athenian. He fought bravely in the battle of Tanagra and claimed that he would not have been so courageous if he had been born of two Athenians instead of an Athenian and a Thracian slave. He studied with Gorgias, but later became a close companion of Socrates and was present at Socrates’ death. Antisthenes was proudest of his wealth, although he had no money, because he was satisfied with what he had and he could live in whatever circumstances he found himself. Here he follows Socrates in three respects. First, Socrates himself lived with a disregard for pleasure and pain – e.g., walking barefoot in snow. Second, Socrates thinks that in every circumstance a virtuous person is better off than a nonvirtuous one; Antisthenes anticipates the Stoic development of this to the view that virtue is sufficient for happiness, because the virtuous person uses properly whatever is present. Third, both Socrates and Antisthenes stress that the soul is more important than the body, and neglect the body for the soul. Unlike the later Cynics, however, both Socrates and Antisthenes do accept pleasure when it is available. Antisthenes also does not focus exclusively on ethics; he wrote on other topics, including logic. (He supposedly told Plato that he could see a horse but not horseness, to which Plato replied that he had not acquired the means to see horseness.)
Diogenes of Sinope (c.400–c.325 B.C.) continued the emphasis on self-sufficiency and on the soul, but took the disregard for pleasure to asceticism. (According to one story, Plato called Diogenes ‘Socrates gone mad.’) He came to Athens after being exiled from Sinope, perhaps because the coinage was defaced, either by himself or by others, under his father’s direction. He took ‘deface the coinage!’ as a motto, meaning that the current standards were corrupt and should be marked as corrupt by being defaced; his refusal to live by them was his defacing them. For example, he lived in a wine cask, ate whatever scraps he came across, and wrote approvingly of cannibalism and incest. One story reports that he carried a lighted lamp in broad daylight looking for an honest human, probably intending to suggest that the people he did see were so corrupted that they were no longer really people. He apparently wanted to replace the debased standards of custom with the genuine standards of nature – but nature in the sense of what was minimally required for human life, which an individual human could achieve, without society. Because of this, he was called a Cynic, from the Greek word kuon (dog), because he was as shameless as a dog. Diogenes’ most famous successor was Crates (fl. c.328–325 B.C.). He was a Boeotian, from Thebes, and renounced his wealth to become a Cynic. He seems to have been more pleasant than Diogenes; according to some reports, every Athenian house was open to him, and he was even regarded by them as a household god. Perhaps the most famous incident involving Crates is his marriage to Hipparchia, who took up the Cynic way of life despite her family’s opposition and insisted that educating herself was preferable to working a loom. Like Diogenes, Crates emphasized that happiness is self-sufficiency, and claimed that asceticism is required for self-sufficiency; e.g., he advises us not to prefer oysters to lentils. He argues that no one is happy if happiness is measured by the balance of pleasure and pain, since in each period of our lives there is more pain than pleasure. Cynicism continued to be active through the third century B.C., and returned to prominence in the second century A.D. after an apparent decline. See also EUDAIMONISM , SOCRATES, STO- ICISM , VIRTUE ETHIC. H.A.I.