Greece & Rome · c. 400 BCE – 5th c. CE
Cynicism
Virtue alone is enough for happiness, and it is found by living simply according to nature, scorning wealth, status and social convention.
What do we really need to live well?
Antisthenes, a follower of Socrates, took his master’s indifference to comfort and opinion as the heart of philosophy. Diogenes of Sinope, exiled and poor, turned it into public performance in Athens and Corinth, living in a storage jar and mocking the powerful; the name comes from kyōn, “dog”.
If virtue is all that matters for happiness, as Socrates suggested, then everything else, such as money, fame, family and city, is at best indifferent and often a chain. Animals live well with almost nothing; so can we, once we strip away artificial needs. Shamelessness becomes a teaching tool that exposes how arbitrary conventions are.
- Virtue is sufficient for happiness.
- Live according to nature, not convention.
- “I am a citizen of the world” (kosmopolitēs).
Cynicism handed Stoicism its ethical core and coined the ideal of the cosmopolitan; its provocative style lives on in satire and protest, though modern “cynical” means something quite different.
Thinkers
c. 446–366 BCEAntisthenesDevoted follower of Socrates, later seen as the Cynics’ founderc. 412–323 BCEDiogenes of SinopeExile from Sinope who lived as a “dog” in AthensWhere it came from
Grew out ofSocratic philosophyThe Cynics took Socrates’ poverty, frankness and indifference to opinion as the whole of philosophy, dropping his theoretical inquiries.
What it led to
Carried on byStoicismZeno studied with the Cynic Crates and kept the Cynic view that virtue alone suffices for happiness, while restoring logic and physics.
On the record
No primary texts by Antisthenes or Diogenes survive, so the Cynic works list is empty.
Ancient catalogues list many Cynic writings, but none survives; Cynicism is known through anecdotes and sayings, above all in Diogenes Laertius, Book 6.