I don’t often talk about joy; I think it’s silly. (I don’t know why I think this.) But recently I’ve been troubled by troubles of my own making (and some not of my own making), and this coincided fortuitously with my daughter’s discovery of Disney’s The Jungle Book and with that Baloo the bear.
What a picture of a Cynic: contentedly resting at ease with just the bare necessities. It’s a healthy correction. My picture of Cynicism is too Antisthenes: all discipline and scorn. Either that or it’s Diogenes and his outrageous displays. There’s not enough in these pictures to capture the product of Cynicism: happiness and simplicity. Happiness in simplicity. We only see their philosophy, which might miss the point entirely.
‘And don’t spend your time lookin’ around for something you want that can’t be found. When you find out you can live without it and go along not thinkin’ about it, I’ll tell you something true: the bare necessities of life will come to you.’
Singing this song to my smiling daughter is pure joy: I need nothing more. Though I’m not much of a singer.
So it begins. Into this contentment creeps a feeling: more than the narrow insecurity about the quality of my singing, there’s a wider sense that my world has become so small and simple – and with it, me – and that there’s something I’m not doing that I ought to be.
Is this what I am, now? A tenth-rate singer of silly songs? Out there, philosophers are doing great and complex philosophy, in person or in print. I’m not. I’m no longer one of them.
This troubles me, even though I wouldn’t choose to do otherwise and I have everything I need. It takes only a little wrestling to pin this feeling down, and the cause of it. It is τῦφος, as a Cynic would say: smoke, delirium, vanity.
τιμὰς τὰς τῶν πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων. (Plato, Gorgias, 526d) ‘The things most people prize.’ I turn away from it. As Kant might say: I have freed myself from the burden that weighs upon theory.
Cynicism is a practical philosophy. It’s not enough to only think about it or write about it. That kind of theoretical philosophy can only achieve so much and is no less vulnerable to the nonsense that is liable to enchant a human being.
Because philosophy has its own enchanting pursuits, besides wisdom: knowledge, understanding, clarity or power of expression in writing or speaking. I tend to get wrapped up in the pursuits of a philosopher and in that lose sight of the purpose of one. I care about how much I know and understand, which is as it stands far more than I need and I suspect far more than is good for me. Worse, I care about being recognised for this, and for my writing (only for my writing, since I am no longer lecturing), which is the clearest sign, in itself, that I don’t understand as much as I think. I suspect this need for recognition is more about a need for some reassurance that I am not an idiot: I still think peer review matters, and so it matters to be one of the ‘peers’. But for that you must earn your place.
What enchanting nonsense! Tell me how it matters to my daughter, in that simple happy moment, whether her father’s expression of Wittgensteinian ethics is captivating? And then ask me whether I would put this pursuit over and above my daughter’s smile?
Society puts us under a kind of spell. It is a soul-sickness that has infected the developed world. It tells us that we have nothing when we have everything; it tells us that, since we have so little, we need more, and that all of this is necessary and unavoidable, and this sense of inescapable necessity makes us slaves when we could be free. This sickness is contagious and hereditary: we spread it wherever we go, and we pass it on to our children.
Philosophy is medicine for the soul. Its primary purpose is to cure you of your false and faulty understanding of what matters. It works by disenchanting you from the nonsense that holds your attention before enchanting you, in its place, with wisdom and goodness.
The purpose of philosophical writing is to persuade you to take your medicine.
But Cynicism is a practical philosophy. When you are troubled by wanting something that you don’t need, it isn’t always enough to reason with yourself, or to read or write about it: you need to find out you can live without it.
I can’t live without philosophy: it is what I am. But I can live without being a ‘philosopher’, in the modern sense. I can live without the trappings of philosophy. ‘The things most people prize.’ By buying into all that, I only buy myself a burden. I am better off without it.
Il faut imaginer Antisthenes heureux.
What is the best and most rational way for me to conduct myself in a world that is filled with confusion and obfuscation? How can I attain happiness and serenity in the midst of so much blind and uncontrolled striving on the part of those who surround me? How can I liberate myself from the social and political fetters with which the irrationality of the human world seeks to immobilize me? To what extent can my example as a free spirit illuminate the path of others, so that they, too, may set themselves free? How can virtue become actualized in my daily actions? How is it possible to practice the art of truth-telling, an art that begins with the study of the meanings of words, and that compels me to call everything by the right name? How is it possible ‘to break the thread which ties human beings to their illusions’? These questions […] are the kernel of Antisthenes’ thought.
Luis E. Navia, Classical Cynicism
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