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25-09-2015, 05:41

Antisthenes

Philosopher

Born: c. 444 b. c.e.; Athens, Greece Died: c. 365 b. c.e.; Athens, Greece Category: Philosophy

Life Antisthenes (an-TIHS-thuh-neez) was the son of an Athenian citizen, also named Antisthenes; his mother was a Thracian slave. Because both parents were not Athenian citizens, Antisthenes was not entitled to citizenship under a law passed by Pericles in 451 b. c.e., and he could not take part in Athenian politics or hold public office. He probably attended the Cynosarges gymnasium, located outside the gates of Athens and reserved for children of illegitimate unions. Although not a citizen, Antisthenes served in the Athenian army.

The young Antisthenes attended Gorgias’s lectures on rhetoric and logic and adopted his Sophist approach. After Antisthenes met Socrates, however, he followed his new mentor, joining in the dialogues through which Socrates taught. Plato records that Antisthenes was one of the close friends of Socrates who attended him during his execution in 399 b. c.e. Afterward, Antisthenes returned to teaching at the Cynosarges gymnasium and developed the philosophical approach that came to be known as classical Cynicism.

During his lifetime, Antisthenes reportedly produced sixty-two dialogues, orations, and essays that were collected in ten volumes; however, only brief fragments of these survive, mostly in quotations and paraphrases by later Greek and Roman authors, many of whom were critical of Antis-thenes. The quotations were frequently chosen for their wit and reflect Antisthenes’ liking for paradoxes that challenged accepted ideas and customs. As a result, the fragments are sufficiently ambiguous to support widely varying interpretations.

Even the origin of the name “Cynicism” is disputed. The word “cynic” derives directly from the Greek word cunikos, meaning “doglike.” Some claim that it came from Antisthenes’ Greek nickname (which translates as “Absolute Dog”), given him derisively because of his desire to live life as a dog might, free of human restraints and conventions. This appellation was accepted by Antisthenes and his successors.

From Socrates, Antisthenes had learned that virtue was the only good worth striving for and that it could be taught; in contrast, wealth, fame, pleasure, and power were worthless. Antisthenes proceeded to expand and exaggerate these ideas and to illustrate his concepts through his manner of living. To demonstrate his self-sufficiency and contempt for materialism, he reduced his possessions to the bare minimum, walking about Athens supporting himself by a strong stick, his hair and beard uncombed, in what became the Cynic uniform: a threadbare cloak and a leather knapsack containing a few necessities.

For Antisthenes, pleasure was to be avoided; it produced the illusion of happiness, thus preventing realization of true contentment, which was obtainable only through the practice of virtue. Antisthenes constantly ridiculed and expressed his contempt for the democratic political ideas and practices of Athens. He told its citizens that they might as well vote to call donkeys “horses” as to believe that they could create leaders and generals using the ballot. Like many of Socrates’ followers, he admired the disciplined lifestyle of Sparta, finding it a more rational way to produce leaders and followers than democratic practices. Yet even Sparta was far from perfect; the political world as a whole was irrational and undesirable. Nor did the speculations of the philosophers and scientists of his day please Antis-thenes. He dismissed their theories as linguistic games that failed to meet the Socratic standard of absolute truthfulness.

Antisthenes’ focus was on practical ethics; anything beyond that he considered an illusion. He was especially scornful of the Platonic theory that ideal forms had a concrete existence outside the world of sense perception and were the unchanging reality that lay behind the world of appearances. Antisthenes is reported to have told Plato that while his horse could be seen, “equinity” (the idea of a horse) could not be seen.

Antisthenes liked to interpret the story of Heracles allegorically, as an example of the moral virtues of hard work and perseverance, but did not consider the Greek epics to be serious religious tracts. At times, he came close to espousing monotheism, arguing that “according to custom there are many gods, but in nature there is only one.” He rejected the anthropomorphic approach of Greek mythology, claiming that God resembled nothing and no one.

Antisthenes rejected the idea that Greeks were by nature superior to the rest of humankind. He deplored the extreme parochialism and nationalism that dominated Greek city-states and led to endless internecine warfare. He was scornful of the widely held notion that work was demeaning and that craftsmen were of lower value than intellectual workers. Instead, he viewed hard labor and perseverance as a means of achieving true virtue. Women were not necessarily inferior to men, he held; because virtue could be taught to both sexes, men and women were virtuous or vicious depending on how they had been educated. By rejecting the distinction between Greek and barbarian, Antisthenes challenged the Greek justification of slavery as a status befitting inferior human beings.

Influence Antisthenes’ ideas and practices were admired and adopted by a series of Cynics, of which his immediate successor, Diogenes of Sinope, was best known. Diogenes, adopting the Cynic uniform that Antisthenes had pioneered, went further, limiting his possessions to what he could carry in his leather knapsack and sleeping outdoors in a barrel. He was even more vitriolic than Antisthenes in his condemnation of custom and society. Diogenes’ successor, Crates of Thebes, continued the practice of asceticism and the public flouting of human customs, while avoiding the sarcastic insults that Diogenes employed. Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, began as a Cynic follower of Crates but by 300 b. c.e. had begun to create his own school of philosophy. Zeno stressed the self-reliant and independent strain of Antisthenes’ philosophy while eliminating its challenges to the status quo.

Of the three philosophical traditions descending from Socrates, the two deriving from Plato and Aristotle are more significant for their impact on the modern world than that pioneered by Antisthenes. In the ancient world, however, the two schools of practical morality derived from Antisthenes, classical Cynicism and Stoicism, were of major significance in teaching people how to criticize and yet live in an imperfect society.

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Antisthenes