Antisthenes starts where Socrates ends. Socrates claimed that nothing was more important than living well, but that we don’t often know what ‘living well’ is; we need philosophy to get this knowledge. He concluded that this philosophical knowledge is necessary for virtue, and once you have this philosophical knowledge you understand that virtue is sufficient for happiness. As such, we should all do philosophy so that we can live well. Nothing else really matters. The unexamined life is not worth living. But if this philosophical virtue is sufficient for happiness, why bother with anything else?
Why bother with wealth when you can get by with very little? Why bother with status or prestige or success when the opinions of the ignorant have no value? Why bother with shoes when you can walk around barefoot? Why bother with clothing when you can get by with a cloak? Why even bother with pleasure when it doesn’t really matter?
All that matters is doing philosophy and being virtuous; you can do this getting by with just some basic food and water, occasionally shelter, and some like-minded people to talk with. So this is exactly what the Cynics did.
You can see now why this could be seen as the true Socratic legacy. It is reminiscent of Socrates, who walked around barefoot, visibly poor, doing little but berating passers-by with questions about virtue. Socrates came to this way of life as an older man, having lived an active public life; the Cynics start off where Socrates ends up.
Antisthenes taught Socrates’ philosophy at the Cynosarges and wrote some texts, as did some of the other Cynics, though none of those texts survive in any complete form. There are many stories of Cynics writing philosophical works but then burning them or throwing them into the sea, recognising them as ‘phantoms of infernal dreams’, once again echoing Socrates’ attitude that the written word was not conducive to the truth (and is therefore worthless).
The Cynics went further even than Socrates in their puritanical disdain for any semblance of sophistry, most of them choosing not to engage in any kind of philosophical debate, instead limiting themselves to pithy one-liners. Rejecting the vanity of the public forum, the Cynics showed their philosophy through their lives and actions. Refusing to talk the talk, they walked the walk, trusting that everyone would see them walking and that would be sufficient instruction. And if no one was looking, then they might just have to do something to get their attention… And this they did, often and with relish.
The Cynics’ philosophical treatises might not survive in the historical record, but their outrageous attention-seeking behaviour certainly does. It’s an impressive back-catalogue of insults, indecency, and, reading between the lines, a more than typical amount of getting punched in the head. The Cynics were notorious, in every sense of the word. We have to do some work to extract the philosophical content from the gossip, but beneath all the bluster and mockery there is a stable and relatively coherent philosophical school of thought.
Since most of what we know of Cynic philosophy we find expressed in the lives of its characters, I will follow tradition and focus on the lives and actions of the Cynics, rather than their arguments, selecting a few typical stories from a few typical characters – Antisthenes, Diogenes, Crates, and Hipparchia – to give an impression of the Cynic way of life. Diogenes is the most colourful of these, by some degree, and so it is fitting that he carries the claim to being the eponymous Cynic. But it’s also clear that a lot of these stories have been mis-attributed, re-attributed, exaggerated, and likely straight-up made-up over the ages; in a way confirming the Cynic mistrust for the truth of the written word. Did it really happen? Did it really happen like that? Was it Antisthenes or Diogenes? These are not questions we can answer, but fortunately not much depends on answering them.
Antisthenes: Founder of the Cynic School of Thought
Antisthenes said he would rather go mad than experience pleasure. That is clearly hyperbolic, but it captures the more austere Socratic approach that can be seen in the early days of Cynic philosophy. What emerges from Antisthenes, for me, is just what follows (and only what follows) from Socrates’ philosophy: if virtue really is sufficient for happiness and the only thing that matters to a good life, as Socrates says, then pursue only virtue and run away from everything else. Everything other than virtue is not good in itself and is just a distraction from the only thing that is good in itself: virtue. Wealth is a distraction, so throw it away; reputation is a distraction, so dismiss it; pleasure is a distraction, so avoid it. This explains Antisthenes’ hyperbolic statement: Experiencing pleasure is pleasurable, which is something that you are naturally inclined to value. But pleasure itself is not valuable, this you know, and yet it distracts you from your pursuit of virtue, which you know is the only thing that really matters. As such, experiencing and valuing pleasure is irrational, and you know it. And Antisthenes would rather go mad than be knowingly irrational: the insane are at least not knowingly irrational, and so cannot be held culpable for their irrationality.
Antisthenes said that hard labour was a good thing. We should choose the harder option, because it is less pleasurable, and therefore less likely to distract us from our pursuit of virtue. As a bonus, hard labour itself can be virtuous or a source of virtue, because it makes us stronger, but idleness and relaxation rarely achieve the same. Therefore, hard labour is a good thing. To be hard-working and eschew pleasure is virtuous, and to be contrasted with a life of idle luxury: ‘May the children of my enemies be luxurious’, says Antisthenes.
This begins a tradition of the Cynics looking to ‘toil’ or ‘exercise’ (in the Greek, ponos) whenever they could. This doesn’t mean working hard or working out, clearly, because many of the Cynics were unemployed scroungers. Instead, it means looking to make life more difficult when you can in order to cultivate your virtue.
Wearing his poverty and low status like a badge of honour, Antisthenes was scornful of reputation, status, and glory. Such things are only measures of opinion, and what value are the opinions of the ignorant? When he was praised by some ignorant and unvirtuous people, he said he was afraid he had done some ignorant or unvirtuous thing. He said it was a royal privilege to do well but be spoken badly of. He said it was better to fall among crows than among flatterers, because crows only devour the dead, but flatterers devour the living. (There is a characteristically clever pun on the Ancient Greek words for ‘crow’ and ‘flatterer’ here.)
If you are praised or flattered, for whatever reason, deserved or undeserved, you come to value the praise itself (because it makes you feel good) and not the virtue of whatever it was you were doing. Once again, being praised is something that distracts you from being virtuous, and so you should run away from praise.
Antisthenes was scornful of inherited status. He mocked the nobility by saying that his parents were not good wrestlers, and yet he was. Clearly, you do not inherit your virtue at birth but cultivate it through life. Therefore, it is foolish and shameful to celebrate your inherited status. Why celebrate that you have what you have not earned?
To those who are envious of the wealth and status of others, he warns that envy is like rust on a blade: it corrodes an otherwise strong and sharp person.
When asked why he was so harsh with people, he replied that doctors often have to resort to bitter medicine. When asked why he engaged in philosophical debate, if he was so indifferent to it, he replied that a doctor needs to mingle with the sick in order to treat them.
Wealth, nobility, philosophy, religion, politics; Antisthenes shows mocking indifference to them all. He asked of priests who were confident of rewards in the afterlife why they didn’t go ahead and die. He said that the wise person obeys the law of virtue, not the law of the state. He said that virtue is the same in a woman as in a man, rejecting the patriarchal conventions of the time.
Antisthenes’ austere Socratic approach is summed up thus: Virtue is all that matters and is sufficient for happiness. Virtue can be learnt and taught by philosophers, but it is something that is done and not only something that is known about. Virtue is a kind of work. It follows that you need to put effort into being virtuous, not just talking about it. Training yourself to be (as well as talk of being) virtuous requires a scornful and disciplined avoidance of all things that are not virtuous or else indifferent to virtue, such as wealth, status, and popular opinion.
Whilst Antisthenes might have constructed the bones of the Cynic school of thought, it takes a student of Antisthenes to make it a fully-fleshed living and breathing (and barking) way of life.
Diogenes the Dog
Diogenes was from Sinope, a town on the northern coast of what we would now call Turkey. His father was said to have been in charge of the public bank there but had been exiled (or imprisoned and killed, depending on the story) for defacing the currency. Or perhaps it was Diogenes who defaced the currency, causing his father to be punished. However it happened, the young Diogenes was forced to flee his home town, subsequently travelling to Athens and coming to meet Antisthenes.
Whether it starts with Diogenes’ father, or Diogenes himself, or even if it’s just a myth, the practice of ‘defacing currency’ became something associated with the Cynic school of thought. It’s clearly symbolically fitting, as an act: you literally mark your disdain for wealth. It’s so fitting, in fact, that it casts doubt on the authenticity of that part of Diogenes’ origin story. Too good to be true, surely? Perhaps more legend than legal tender.
After some long hard pestering, Antisthenes reluctantly agrees to take the down-and-out Diogenes as his student, and Diogenes proceeds to exceed his teacher’s defiant self-reliance in all ways imaginable. Diogenes took to self-imposed poverty easily, being already poor and homeless, and limited his possessions to one cloak for clothing, which he wrapped around himself double when it was cold, and one bag to hold food. And that’s it. He had no home and lived on the streets. He begged for food and coin, living off a diet of water and lentils (and whatever else anyone threw his way). He took to living in what is described as a large earthen jar – the Ancient Greek equivalent of living in a cardboard box, I suppose.
This is how he gains the title ‘the dog’: he lives like a stray dog, on the streets, living off scraps, barking angrily at passers-by and accusing them of lacking virtue.
He once owned a cup, from which he would drink, but when he saw a child drinking from its cupped hands, Diogenes threw his cup away, not wishing to be outdone in self-reliance by a child. He once owned a spoon, with which he would eat his soup, but on seeing a child eating soup with a crust of bread, Diogenes threw away the spoon.
Diogenes would train himself to endure hardship, rolling around in hot sand in the summer and hugging frozen snow-covered statues in the winter. He’d also beg from statues to practise being rejected. He’d walk around barefoot in the hot sun or freezing snow.
So far, so self-denyingly good, and much aligned with Antisthenes’ scornful and disciplined avoidance of luxury. But there is an important modification of the Cynic school of thought that seems to emerge (or gain emphasis) with Diogenes, because Diogenes did not avoid all pleasure; at times quite the opposite!
There are stories of Diogenes masturbating in public. When he is challenged on the impropriety of this, he famously replied: ‘If only I could satisfy my hunger by rubbing my belly.’ It’s perhaps not a pleasant story and not an example we might want to emulate, but there’s a lesson in it. If the satisfaction of basic natural desires, like thirst or hunger or warmth (or sexual gratification) is readily available, why not take it? If you’re thirsty and there’s water, drink the water. If you’re hungry and there’s bread, eat the bread. Perhaps there are social conventions that say we should only eat at certain times of the day and in certain places, but what power should those conventions hold over a Cynic? There is a similar, if less striking, story about Diogenes being admonished for eating in the marketplace (which was not the done thing). Diogenes replies that he did, ‘for it was in the marketplace that I was hungry.’
A more famous story says that Alexander the Great (the most powerful man in the world at the time) came to meet Diogenes the philosopher, who was sunbathing, and, being impressed by the stories he had heard, offered Diogenes anything that he wanted. Diogenes replied that Alexander could get out of his light. Alexander asks Diogenes: ‘do you not fear me?’ Diogenes says no, why should he? ‘Are you good or evil?’, asks Diogenes. Alexander replies predictably, ‘I am good.’ To which Diogenes points out that no one fears the good, so what has he to fear from Alexander the good? Alexander himself remarked that if he had not been Alexander, he should like to have been Diogenes. Alexander the Great, the most powerful man in the world, acknowledging the greatness of Diogenes the Dog, a homeless beggar without a coin to his name. Such is the power of philosophy.
What emerges from Diogenes is not an outright rejection of pleasure, as we see hinted at with Antisthenes, but a very careful limitation of pleasures. Diogenes sees a mouse, happily running about, not looking for money or prestige, and finds a lesson in the mouse’s behaviour: Diogenes says the gods have given us an easy life, but we’ve made it difficult for ourselves by overlaying it with nonsense. It’s not pleasure that’s the problem; it’s that we pursue pleasures that we don’t need. In doing that, we pursue other things we don’t need, like wealth and status. But if we abandon our desire for all of these unnecessary things and live like a mouse, or a dog, we find there is more than enough pleasure in life. Virtue is sufficient for happiness, and the gods (or nature) provide the rest. All you need to do is stick rigidly to your virtue and align your life with nature.
Even in Diogenes’ time to talk of ‘the gods providing’ would be taken metaphorically. This is even more true in our much more secular time. So we can replace ‘the gods’ with ‘nature’ here and the effect is the same. Nature has given us a relatively easy life, but we’ve overlaid it with nonsense. We make life difficult for ourselves by wanting more than our nature needs. Diogenes implores us to realise this, offering us a walking talking living breathing lesson with his own example.
He knows he is going to extremes to make the point. With Diogenes, it’s sometimes difficult to separate the philosophy from the performance art, if there even is a separation there. But Diogenes said he imitated the teachers of choirs, who speak over-loud so that the choir can find the proper tone. When people are singing, you have to shout over them to be heard. He knows he’s being excessive in his behaviour, but he knows it is necessary to break through the noise – people need to be shocked out of their chains.
So he makes a big visible display of his poverty and indifference to anything but virtue. And when people aren’t paying attention, he draws their attention somehow. A lot of this is clearly intended to provoke. He masturbates in public. He hugs statues and begs from them. He mocks, insults, and abuses. He barks like a dog.
This doesn’t come without consequence. Reading between the lines, there are more than a few stories that feature Diogenes getting punched in the face. This is not to say that Diogenes was universally hated and despised – there is a story that someone broke his jar, and the youths of Athens beat the perpetrator up and gave Diogenes a new one – but even so, there are enough stories about Diogenes being beaten to indicate that it was a common occurrence. One such story is innocuous enough and simply says that Diogenes, having been hit in the head, remarks that he was lucky to have discovered that he was wearing a helmet and didn’t realise. What he means by this is that the head, or at least parts of it, are pretty well-made to be punched. (Anyone who’s been punched will know this: the top of the head and forehead is very strong and can easily take a hit, but the sides and lower parts are less resilient.) So on the face of it this is a story about the self-sufficiency of nature: the head doesn’t need a helmet. But also, you wonder why he was getting punched in the first place.
Other stories are more transparent. We’re told that Diogenes is attacked by someone called Midias; the implication being that Diogenes had been over-eager in his begging. There had recently been a compensation claim settled in court, awarding the victim of an assault 3,000 Drachmae. So Midias strikes Diogenes and says ‘there’s 3,000 Drachmae for you’. (Midias is clearly a kind of witty one-liner action hero of his day.) Diogenes’ response reveals more than the simple story suggests, I think: he goes and gets a boxer’s cestus – a kind of basic but slightly more savage boxing glove, designed to protect the hand and do a bit of damage to your opponent when punching – returning the next day to give Midias a sound beating, repaying the debt and saying ‘there’s 3,000 Drachmae for you’.
This is a ‘natural’ response, you might think; the kind of response that someone looking to align their life with nature and live like a dog might see as natural, anyway. If someone barks at you, you bark back; if someone bites, you bite back. It’s perfectly natural. But it is an act of barefaced revenge, on the face of it not particularly virtuous, even by Cynic standards. It’s not exactly aligned with the Socratic claim that ‘it’s better to suffer evil than do it’, for example.
What these kinds of stories mark, for me, is a gradual transition away from the Socratic origins into a new kind of virtue, one that prioritises living aligned with nature. It is this form of virtue that goes forward as the more influential idea. It might be there as an idea in Antisthenes, but it’s Diogenes that breathes life into this idea and gives it a kind of celebrity. Diogenes is the branding that takes over the company; the tail that ends up wagging the dog.
What we are left with is a coherent and powerful philosophical school of thought that is partially obscured by a veneer of bad behaviour. Upon entering a grand and finely-decorated house, Diogenes spat in the owner’s face, claiming everything else was too fine to spit on. At a feast, some drunken guests mockingly throw their leftover bones at Diogenes ‘the dog’; and so Diogenes, on his way out, cocks his leg and urinates on them.
I’m sometimes puzzled by the Cynics, because whilst they profess to eschew pleasure, they also say to do (and do) what feels natural. Lots of what they do is clearly about enjoying simple pleasures, such as sunbathing, masturbation, or insulting people that you despise.
I think the answer is that once you are indifferent to the ‘shadows’ of pleasure – the empty pleasures of glory, success, wealth, reputation, or even luxury – you come to realise that there is more than enough pleasure to be found in simple things. These simple things are amply provided for by nature: the sun is nice and warm, lentils are filling, water quenches your thirst. What more do you want? And if it’s not a sunny day, or you don’t have any lentils or water, then that’s fine too, because it trains you to be better able to endure the cold or hunger or thirst.
In keeping your desires so extraordinarily minimal, and focussing your will only on virtue (as Socrates instructed), you make yourself invulnerable to misfortune. Life literally cannot hurt you, because there’s nothing that you want or fear.
This means there is less contradiction than there might first appear in on the one hand claiming hostility towards pleasure whilst also enjoying it when it presents itself. Diogenes says that covetousness is the metropolis of all evils, but when asked which wine is best to drink he replies ‘someone else’s’. There is no contradiction here.
Diogenes didn’t show much respect for philosophical debate – in response to someone who argued (like Parmenides or Zeno) that there was no such thing as motion, he simply got up and walked away – and he showed especial disrespect for Plato, whom Diogenes repeatedly accuses of being arrogant. He puns that Plato’s ‘discussions’ are ‘disguise’.
Incidentally, Cynic wordplay is obviously clearer in the original Greek, as when Diogenes says that a certain other philosophical school (schole) is bile (chole).
There is a famous story of Plato presenting a philosophical definition of a ‘man’ as being a ‘two-footed, featherless animal’; to which Diogenes responded by plucking a chicken and bringing it to Plato’s Academy proclaiming: ‘here is Plato’s man!’
The bad feeling between the two appeared to be mutual, judging by the many stories of Plato looking down on Diogenes’ low status with scorn. There is a story of Plato mocking Diogenes for washing vegetables, essentially saying that if Diogenes had been more successful he would not need to spend his time washing vegetables. Diogenes replies that if Plato had spent any time washing vegetables, he would understand that there is no need to be successful.
It’s no surprise that the two heirs to Socrates’ tradition didn’t see eye to eye. They are clearly very different characters, with very different approaches to philosophy. In contrast to Plato’s elitist intellectualism, Diogenes is aggressively anti-intellectual. He mocks someone for asking for a philosophy book, saying: ‘you don’t want to eat paintings of food, but actual food, so why do you only want to read about virtue, rather than do it?’
Diogenes understood that it’s not enough to read and think; you need to do. And when it comes to getting stuff done, it’s practice that makes the biggest difference. The mind needs the body. So if you want to live well, doing only intellectual things is never going to be enough: you need to practise living well to get better at it.
Like Diogenes, Plato understands that virtue is what really matters and pleasure is not what really matters. But, unlike Diogenes, Plato thinks that if your mind understands that then your body will adapt accordingly. But surely it’s not that simple. The desire for pleasure is a very natural desire, deeply embedded in our nature. It’s not so easy to willingly go without.
Diogenes understands that if you practise ignoring pleasure, you get better at it. And if you keep this up, you might end up getting enjoyment from eschewing pleasure. Contempt for pleasure itself becomes pleasurable. If you train yourself to go without luxury, you get better at going without and find it harder to get distracted by empty pleasures. But if you practise getting pleasure, you find it easier to get lured by empty pleasures and find it harder to go without. Diogenes practised what he preached, looking to show his philosophy through his lived example; he looked to change habits, not only minds. For this purpose, all Plato’s complex metaphysics and geometry was unhelpful and unnecessary: all that high-mindedness achieves is flattering egos.
At some point in Diogenes’ life he is captured and enslaved. Even this doesn’t dampen his philosophical spirit, let alone break it. When put up for sale, he is asked to say what he can do of use: to which Diogenes replies that he knows how to instruct people about how to live well, and so someone who wants a master and teacher should buy him as a slave. A man called Xeniades buys Diogenes, and so Diogenes tell Xeniades that he should obey his slave’s instructions, even though he is his slave, just as a patient obeys the instructions of a doctor even though the doctor is employed by the patient. Xeniades doesn’t quite go that far, but he does seem to put Diogenes to use as a tutor for his children and a manager of his house. He did these tasks well. Diogenes taught the children to be self-reliant and seems to have been generally respected and admired even as a slave.
Diogenes lived a long life, never relenting in his philosophical activity. Enslavement was no obstacle for Diogenes and neither was age. When told he should relax in his older years he asked: ‘Why? If I were running a long distance, would I stop running as I neared the end and not press on?’
Diogenes said that exile, and the poverty and social estrangement that came with it, made him a philosopher. It taught him that he could be self-reliant even with nothing. Once that alignment with nature has been achieved, there is little that the world can do to threaten you. And once there, you can do as you please. Even as a slave. As he said of his life: ‘There were times when I did what I did not wish to do, but that is no longer the case.’
Crates and Hipparchia
The final two characters in my story of Cynicism are Crates and Hipparchia. They are Cynics in their own right, with a few good stories and sayings to their names, but what matters more is their influence on the schools of thought that will follow.
Crates’ beginnings could not have been more different than Diogenes’. Crates was born wealthy and thoroughly integrated into society but was so impressed by Diogenes’ philosophical example that he chose a life of total poverty. Hipparchia too seems to have come from a wealthy and respectable family but insists on marrying the impoverished Crates in order to study philosophy. Both choose to surrender their wealth and status in order to prioritise virtue, following the Cynic tradition founded on the Socratic idea.
Crates might have given his wealth away, or else thrown it into the sea, but there are also stories of him putting it into a bank with instructions to the banker to release the money to his sons if they grew up to be, as he said, ‘ordinary ignorant people’. If his sons grew up to be philosophers then the money should be released and given away to the public, since his sons would have no need of it.
Crates said you should study philosophy until you see no difference between generals and donkey-drivers. In most ways he seems to follow Diogenes’ example, adopting the (by now standard) Cynic uniform of a cloak, a staff, and a bag for food. And owning nothing else.
(Incidentally, this ‘uniform’ of a cloak and staff, barefoot, is reportedly what Socrates took to wearing in later life, himself imitating the old Spartan military habits that he admired. But there is no suggestion that Socrates had no wealth or gave it away, only that he was frugal and lived well within his means. Once again this seems to be a case where the Cynics start where Socrates ended and then nudge one step beyond.)
Crates also seems to follow Diogenes in the tradition of getting punched in the face. There is one story of Crates receiving a black eye from someone call Nicodromus, so Crates sticks a plaster on his face that carries the writing ‘Nicodromus did this’. As comebacks go it’s not quite at Diogenes’ level, but it makes a point.
Hipparchia, in being a woman, and the first woman we’ve mentioned in our brief history of philosophy to date, provides us with the first stories of an entirely predictable patriarchal response to a woman doing the same as a man. In response to her philosophical provocation, rather than getting punched in the face, she has her clothes torn off. But as a Cynic who cares nothing for reputation, this attempt to ‘humiliate’ her in public falls flat. What does she care if people see her naked? Would a Cynic man care? Diogenes masturbated in public!
A similar story follows when an unnamed philosopher asks Hipparchia what seems to be a classically sexist question about why she chose to study philosophy and not stay at home weaving. A sort of ancient Greek ‘why don’t you get back in the kitchen?’, I suppose. Hipparchia responds to this ‘philosopher’ (who should know better) by asking whether she has made the right decision in studying philosophy, rather than the loom? If it is right for a man to study philosophy, why is not right for a woman? The ‘philosopher’ has no answer and is left embarrassed.
Cynicism is a great leveller. Some Cynics were born to wealth, others to slavery, they all end up equals in material poverty but philosophical wealth. For them, this defines what it is to be a philosopher. Philosophy is a handful of lentils and to care for nothing.
The Courage of Cynicism
I love the Cynics and I wish I were courageous enough to be one. I think they are essentially right in everything they say. A student once expressed surprise at this, when I said as much in a lecture, pointing out that I had celebrated Socrates’ prioritisation of the ethical. Were not the two incompatible? Socrates says there is nothing more important than living a decent life; the Cynics go around spitting in people’s faces and generally causing trouble. However you justify it, there is not much ‘decency’ in Cynic life.
I think that’s true, and I was glad to have the question at the time. It is easy to get carried away by the idea of rebellious virtue and lose touch with daily reality. Most of the time, it would simply be rude to be a Cynic and you would insult a lot of people. But what I can’t let go of is the idea that the Cynics rebel against a set of social norms that are really, truly, stupid. Yes, it would be rude to mockingly insult someone for wasting their money on an impressive and shiny new car, or phone, or clothes. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. It really is a waste of money – immoral, even – and they are stupid for not realising it. Why not point that out? Are you not doing them a favour?
But even so, I don’t live like a Cynic and likely never would. The danger is that I would be avoiding Cynicism out of cowardice only: I just don’t want to deal with the conflict and bad feeling that results from mocking insults, or from living so apart from the norms of society, however justified that might be. And if I’m steered that way by cowardice, how much else am I steered into? Suddenly I find I don’t think it’s so stupid or immoral to buy an impressive and shiny new car. Next, I find myself wanting to also buy an impressive and shiny new car to match. And now I have become what I hate and despise. And all because I wasn’t courageous enough to deal with a little healthy disagreement.
Too often in my life I have found myself leant into things that I would never have chosen for myself. I do them for the most part because other people think they are for the best for me, and I take their word for it or else am too cowardly to resist. Mostly, though, what they think is best for me reflects what would be best for them, and for their natures, not mine. As such, I end up living someone else’s life, or at least end up living my life according to someone else’s values. This is cowardice, pure and simple, and I suspect that is why I have a lasting admiration for the Cynics. I wish I could be more like them.
And so whilst I would not conclude that the Cynics offer us a picture of the right way to live, I firmly believe they are a very healthy corrective to the nonsense of the world. I don’t expect to be able to match their commitment, but it is enough for me that I don’t lag behind.
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