1. Understand your nature
2. Make life harder when you can
3. Spit in the face of status (metaphorically)
4. Be like a dog
5. Take things as they come
One. Understand your nature. You might have noticed that this starting point is the same as Aristotle’s. It is a shared Socratic inheritance. It’s very difficult to live in harmony with yourself if you don’t know who or what you are. Aristotle chooses to go down the route of understanding universal human nature through his down-to-earth metaphysics, and after that we understand a particular human’s nature by observation. The Cynics take a simpler route. Look at a mouse; see how the mouse behaves: it looks after its needs and does what it chooses. It lives as an expression of its nature, aligned with Nature, knowing no different. What lesson can we learn from this?
Look at humans and how they behave. What nature does this express? As Diogenes says, if you looked at navigators, doctors, and philosophers, you would think there is no wiser animal than man; but if you look at mystics, psychics, and the people who listen to them, and all people puffed-up with glory, you would think there is no animal more foolish than man. In line with the philosophical understanding of that time (and of most time since), the Cynics understood the defining feature of human nature to be our capacity for rational thought. We can think and reason and choose. These are things a mouse cannot do, but we can. Just as we wouldn’t expect a mouse to live like a human, because of its mouse nature, so our nature is not to live like a mouse but like a human, according to our distinctively human nature, and that means to live in a way that exercises our capacity for rational thought. This is why when we look at navigators, doctors, and philosophers, we see this human nature best expressed, because it is these human beings who are exercising their capacity for rational thought. But the psychics, mystics, and people puffed-up with glory, they live by their irrationality and in so doing they do not live according to their distinctively human nature.
That these are irrational ways to live is something that can be exposed through Socratic questioning, and a lot of the Cynics outrageous behaviour is little more than an attention-seeking way of posing Socratic questions to people, even if they don’t hang around to debate the point as Socrates would. They are ways to get you to ask the right questions. Diogenes sees a man proudly wearing a lion’s skin and says: ‘Don’t go on disgracing the clothing of nature.’ The lion is majestic in its skin; is a man majestic because he wears it? ‘I am better than you because I wear the skin of a lion.’ And yet you are incapable of enduring the cold? Ask the right question: what makes you a better human being?
Once you follow this and other lines of Socratic questioning you will find your nature and ‘know thyself’. You will find that you are an animal and need everything that an animal requires, but also that you have a capacity for rational thought. Understand this and you will understand that you can use that capacity for rational thought to reflect on your life and thoughts, put them to the test, and cultivate your nature so that you can live in a way that you would choose. For the Cynics, that means bringing your natural responses in line with your natural requirements: wanting only what you need, fearing only what you must. If you can do this then you will be as free and untroubled as it is possible for a human being to be. The Cynic philosophical path can lead you to an understanding of your nature, of what you need and must fear, but this is an ongoing task. As Diogenes shows, he thinks he is doing well to own only a cup, until he sees a child drinking from its hands and realises that he does not need the cup after all. He learns that nature has already provided him with what he needs; he only imagined he needed a cup.
Animal needs and rational thought: that is human nature. Anything beyond this is made-up nonsense that we put upon nature. We get distracted by this nonsense, thinking it to be important, and end up living in imaginary chains of our own making. We buy ourselves binding debts and burdens. Understand your nature and you will free yourself. A Cynic would say that philosophy is a handful of lentils and to care for nothing.
Two: Make life harder when you can. The Cynics had a word for this: ponos. It translates as something like ‘hard work’ or ‘toil’. Ponos is about immersing yourself in what challenges you and learning to swim in it. In simple terms this is rolling in the hot sand or hugging frozen statues, but in a more idealised way it is training yourself to endure and become comfortable with what makes you uncomfortable. You need to become acclimatised to the natural sufferings of human life. But acclimatisation only comes from habitual training. Like using progressive resistance training to build muscles by lifting weights, you need to push yourself into discomfort in order to provoke development. Over time, you adapt, and what was once uncomfortable becomes comfortable.
We are all familiar with the concept of training ourselves up. Most people understand that you have to work at something in order to get good at it. If you want to play a musical instrument well, you need to practise; if you want to be a better runner, you need to run; if you want to be a better writer, you need to write. These are not deep mysteries. No one is born able to do these things well. You start by doing these things badly, and you work at it, and you improve over time and with effort, within the limits of your natural talents or capacities.
The Cynics understand that we can apply this familiar process to all areas of our lives and through this gain mastery over ourselves. If you want to be virtuous, practise it, work at it; don’t expect it to come for free. If you don’t want to be a slave to your excessive appetites, practise going without. The more you practise, the easier it will get, until eventually you will be in command of yourself.
I think of ponos a lot. I have it in mind whenever I find myself having to face my anxiety. I naturally hate having to face my anxiety, obviously, because it is a naturally hateful thing to do. But when I do, I comfort myself that it is an opportunity for ponos. And the worse it is, the better it is, because hard labour is a good thing. I immerse myself in it and learn to swim in it and in that I work to gain mastery over it. I appreciate the lessons it teaches me: it exposes my errors, the valuing of my image or reputation and my dependency on other people’s opinions. It shows me how vulnerable I am to these things, which are only shadows and cannot really harm me; and am I content to be so afraid of shadows? I am glad to work to overcome these errors. In this process I know I am doing something of which I can rightly be proud. I remember that it is a precious gift to do well but be badly thought of. But I also know that nothing comes from nothing, and if I want to be free from my fears then I must pay the price. That price is ponos: struggle, toil, and hard work, which in this case is facing my anxiety and the situations that provoke it.
You will have your own examples. What’s important to remember is that this drive to ‘toil’ is not arbitrary or undirected. Unlike some attitudes to life, the Cynics do not see the work itself as valuable. They would laugh at someone who thought there was virtue to be found in working yourself into the ground to make money; they would say there is nothing virtuous about that kind of work, no matter how hard it might be. Like Socrates, the Cynics say that ‘hard work’, like all things, is valuable only when it is virtuous. But when it is virtuous, then it is valuable. And as we’ve seen, for the Cynics virtue is a matter of using your reason to align your will with nature, to bring your natural responses in line with your natural requirements. When ‘hard work’ is directed towards this aim, then it is virtuous and valuable, but otherwise it is a waste of effort and an indication, not of virtue, but of ignorance and a lack of understanding of what really matters in life.
Three: Spit in the face of status (metaphorically). Diogenes walks into a rich man’s house, all decked out in grandeur, and spat in the owner’s face because everything else was too nice to spit on. As with many Cynic stories, its truth might be a bit dubious since it is also told about an earlier philosopher called Aristippus, yet another student of Socrates, who was the founder of the Cyrenaic school of thought (a little more on them later, but this school doesn’t get much of a mention in this book because it doesn’t seem, to my mind, to be a good example of philosophy). But whether it happened or not, and whoever did it, it’s a good story and it makes a point. Once you understand what is really of value in human life, you are free to be indifferent to worthless displays of wealth and status, knowing that nothing that can be bought with money has any real value.
It is incredible how vulnerable human beings can be to this imagined hierarchy of value, that we call socio-economic, marked by displays of wealth and status. Put a home-owning man in a house grander than his and he will feel inadequate and envious; he was content with his house before, but now he is ashamed and dissatisfied. His dissatisfaction buys him only a burden. Now he needs more. But he will never be satisfied, because there is always a grander house, and having imagined he needs it, he will never be free from the fear of losing whatever he has.
A Cynic frees themselves from this burden. The burden is the product of ignorance; it is a mistake to be corrected through philosophy. A Cynic knows that you do not need a grander house. A Cynic knows that the value of a house can only be how it serves to meet your natural requirements. ‘I have a better house than you, therefore I am better than you.’ What nonsense this is! Are you not both human beings, with the same natural requirements? And are you not ashamed to have so little self-command that you need a bigger house to meet your needs? ‘She has a better house than me, therefore I am a worse person than her.’ Don’t be ashamed of having a worse house, be ashamed of being someone who doesn’t understand what really matters!
Displays of wealth and status are nothing more than vulgar displays of ignorance. If you understand what really matters in human life you will see no value in such things. So shrug it off, laugh at it, dismiss it for the worthless nonsense that it is. Study philosophy until you see no difference between generals and donkey-drivers, between the ‘highest’ in society and the ‘lowest’, and then see how absurd someone looks when they parade around in pomp and grandeur, a slave to their luxury and reputation, their displays of wealth only advertising their ignorance! What fools they make of themselves! But what is it to you if people make fools of themselves? Their life of luxury is their business, but fortunately for you it is not yours.
Four: Be like a dog. Do not do what a dog does. A dog is a slave to his appetites: give a hungry dog food and he will eat until he vomits and then eat his vomit and go back for more food. So don’t do what a dog does: do as a dog does, but the human version. A dog has canine appetites and a canine nature, whatever its specific breeding, and it follows that nature and lives in accordance with it. A human also has appetites and the products of its evolutionary and genetic heritage, but a human has what a dog does not: a capacity for rational thought. This combination of our animal and rational nature is what determines our distinctive human nature – as Aristotle terms it, we are essentially rational animals – and so to be like a dog, who lives according to its nature, we must live according to our human nature. This means using our reason to bring our natural responses in line with our natural requirements.
Non-human animals do this automatically because their natural capacities limit the kinds of errors that they can make. Lacking a capacity for rational thought, they do it without thinking. Lacking a capacity for rational thought, a dog has little concept of time, and because of that they always live in the now. We, by contrast, think about the past and future, because we can, and this traps us away from the present moment. It is not always good for us.
Lacking a capacity for rational thought, a dog gives no thought to the ‘right amount of food to eat’, or when they ought to sleep, or whether their bowel movements are healthy. When there is food and they are hungry, they naturally respond by eating; when they are tired they sleep; when they feel like taking a shit they take a shit. They don’t fuss about the appropriate times and places for these things until we make them by making such a fuss about it. Domesticated animals, like dogs, are educated into citizenship, and in a sense this corrupts their nature just as society corrupts our human nature. The look of panic and confusion on a puppy’s face when you are toilet-training it, and it begins to go on the floor, and all the humans jump up and shout ‘no!’ as if there is a great and terrible danger. The puppy looks at you, rightly, with its soul, as if to say: ‘what’s the big deal?’ It is only because we live locked in houses with nice carpets that the dog can’t go where it wants, on the grass or wherever takes its fancy. The world that the dog must live in is the world as we humans have made it, but it is not the dog’s world. If the dog were a Cynic philosopher trying to teach us a lesson, perhaps it would piss in our faces because everything else is too nice to piss on.
And so Diogenes cocks his leg on someone who calls him a dog. It is his nature. He also lives on the streets until he is taken into someone’s household as a slave; we assume he was house-trained. Diogenes lives in the world as it is made by ordinary ignorant people, but it is not his world.
We can all agree that Diogenes probably takes his dog-lessons a bit too far, but he does it mostly to make a point. He wants to show us that he is following the dog’s example and living according to his nature. For Diogenes, being a human and a philosopher, this is the product of a rational decision: he violates social conventions when he chooses to, mostly to teach us a lesson, and not only when his body feels like it. Because, obviously, a Cynic would not only value doing what is natural, when it is natural, but also exerting self-restraint at will. And it’s not too big a leap to say that that self-restraint can be exerted for the good of a household (or a carpet). Even dogs can learn this lesson, and they are better off for it because they don’t end up living in their own filth.
The point that Diogenes is making is that having a capacity for rational thought is both a blessing and a curse, but whether it is a blessing or a curse is largely down to us and how we choose to use it. Fortunately, Nature has equipped us with the one thing that enables us to choose well, which is the thing itself: rational thought. We are wise if we use that capacity to wise ends, but foolish if we use that capacity to foolish ends. We should use our capacity for rational thought to take the good lessons from the dog: live in the now, live according to your nature, be fiercely loyal and loving to what you know to be good and hostile to what threatens you, but care little for what doesn’t matter. Be like a dog, but a human version.
Five: Take things as they come. Understanding their nature and determined to live in accordance with it, the Cynic wants only what they need and fears only what they must. Most of the time they are content and free because they need nothing and have nothing to fear: in this, they have everything they want. They have trained themselves to be content with very little and to endure what is necessary (see ponos above). Striving for virtue, they are happy and free and want nothing more than to be what they are.
But when someone offers them wine, that is an excellent bonus. They don’t need it, and they will not be burdened by the desire for it, but they will take it if it comes and they will enjoy it for what it is. When food comes, they will eat their fill. And when the sun is shining, they will sit in the sun and soak up the rays, being free to do as they wish; if someone stands in their light they will ask them to move.
The Cynics are free to enjoy what comes precisely because they do not need it. It is because they are well-trained in self-restraint that they are unburdened by desire; and it is because they are unburdened by desire that they are free to enjoy what comes their way without any danger of being led astray into imaginary chains. And so they will take what comes, when it comes, but if it doesn’t then they will not be troubled.
The Cynics will not take anything that is offered. Most of what the Cynics enjoy are, predictably, closely connected with a human being’s basic needs: food, drink, warmth. They would still reject nonsense that has no real value, like money or ornamentation. If someone were to offer a Cynic these things, they would turn away simply because they have no desire for worthless things. Or perhaps they would take them but throw them away just as easily.
And when fortune is not good but bad, the Cynic can take that as it comes too. In wanting only what they need and fearing only what they must, and having trained themselves to be content in discomfort, they can endure illness and hard times free from the fear and suffering that plagues ordinary ignorant people. The Cynic’s contentment does not depend on their wealth and physical health; neither of these can give them virtue and so the loss of them cannot take it away.
If you want only what you need and fear only what you must, then you are as free as it is possible for a human being to be. You are free to take whatever comes your way, good or bad, and accept it with equanimity. If good fortune comes your way, then that is good, so long as you don’t let it lead you from your path; and if bad fortune comes your way, then that is also good because it provides you with an opportunity for ponos. Neither good or bad fortune can harm a Cynic.
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