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M. D. Usher on Cynicism (Episode 118)
758 Plays9 months ago
Who were the Cynics and why did the Stoics treat them as exemplars?
In this conversation, Caleb speaks with Dr. M. D. Usher about the ancient philosophy of Cynicism, its training program, and way of life.
(00:47) Farming
(02:21) What Is Cynicism
(06:56) Outsiders
(10:39) Living In Accordance With Nature
(15:15) Storytime
(23:18) Training Program
(32:39) Socrates
(38:38) Modern Cynics
(45:12) Returning to Stoicism and Cynicism
(48:19) Lazy Stoics
***
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Transcript
Introduction to Stoa Conversations and Guests
00:00:00
Speaker
And if you don't have anything, nobody can take anything away from you. You know, Seneca says something interesting. He says somewhere in one of his letters, cease to hope and you'll cease to fear because hope is dependent on the future. Welcome to Stoa Conversations.
00:00:16
Speaker
My name is Caleb Ontiveros, and today I am speaking with Professor Mark Usher, a professor of classical languages and literature at the University of Vermont. He is also a carpenter and a farmer. His books include How to Care About Animals, How to Say No, and How to Be a Farmer. These are all a part of an ancient guide to life series. That's Princeton's, an ancient guide to life series. Well, thanks so much for joining.
00:00:45
Speaker
Thank you. Nice to be here.
Philosophy of Cynicism: Origins and Socratic Connection
00:00:48
Speaker
Well, today we'll focus on cynicism, the philosophy of cynicism. But before doing that, I was struck by looking at your biography. You know, Musonius Rufus says the best vocation for a philosopher is to be a farmer. You know, what are your thoughts on that?
00:01:06
Speaker
Well, of course, I would agree with it, but I'm not quite sure I'm a philosopher. But farming does inculcate all the right habits, teaches you patience, teaches you character. So yeah, there's a lot going for farming in terms of organic philosophy, let's call it. Not bookish for sure, learning as you do and as you try and trial and error. So philosophy is a lot about that, and so is farming.
00:01:36
Speaker
Right, right. And Musunius Rufus says it gives you, of course, that connection to nature. And he also says it gives you more time to philosophize, which I'm not sure if that's true. I don't know if he was a farmer, so that may or may not be true.
00:01:50
Speaker
It depends how much time you spend on the tractor. You're alone in your thoughts quite a bit with repetitive manual work. Of course, farming and antiquity was a lot of repetitive manual work, hoeing a field or plowing a field. I guess it's that time alone.
00:02:10
Speaker
you know, without music in your ears and just the sounds of nature around you. So it's got to be conducive to thinking clearly. Yeah, that seems that seems plausible to me. Well, today, I want to talk a little bit about the philosophy of cynicism. And of course, the first question that arises is, you know, what is cynicism?
The Cynic Lifestyle and Societal Roles
00:02:33
Speaker
What exactly are we talking about?
00:02:36
Speaker
So it's a philosophy for the dogs. The word cynic, as you probably know, but maybe your listeners don't know, means dog or dog-like in ancient Greek.
00:02:46
Speaker
So it was a moniker that was cast as an aspersion on people who lived this lifestyle and preached on the streets. They were called cynics by others, not by themselves. And it had a lot to do with their shameless behavior. They lived on the streets like stray dogs. They basically dumpster dived for their food or, you know,
00:03:12
Speaker
begged for it as a dog would. And they kind of cultivated this image. And many of the anecdotes that we have about the cynics, they play that up. But I always like to think that the cynics were, in some ways, the truer
00:03:29
Speaker
I'll get a lot of flack for this, I think, for saying this. But the truer descendants of Socrates than perhaps Plato and the academics were, or even the Stoics were, I mean, the barefoot disheveled Socrates, not a care in the world, who was pretty much a parasite on other people.
00:03:48
Speaker
The cynics resemble that in many, many ways. And there are a lot of, we can talk more about it if you want, but there are a lot of parallels between the Socratic calling and the cynic calling to philosophize in public. And there's a hint of it, I think, even in Plato. And I think it might go back to Socrates himself originally, and that is Plato in the Republic famously argues that the most philosophical animal is the dog.
00:04:17
Speaker
because a dog knows instinctively what belongs in its domain and what does not. So, you know, the master and the people in the house, he's friendly to, but an intruder or something foreign or something, you know, dangerous, the dog will, you know, attack. And it's all very instinctive. And Plato plays with that idea when he names his guardians, the foulakes, the guardians, that's in Greek, and he's punning on
00:04:47
Speaker
in that passage where he coins that word or that technical term, that's when he says that the dog is the most philosophical animal. And the word that he uses in that context is skulaks. So, skulaks, skulaks, Plato's punning on his guardians. They're the watchdogs, literally, of the ideal society.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yes, to what extent does the modern word cynic map on to the ancient philosophy? So of course, sometimes people are called Stoics as well. You know, he has a stoic response on that lowercase stoic. And it's, on one hand, it's a caricature of the philosophy, but you have someone who has, you know, their idea is they are someone who's not
00:05:33
Speaker
perturbed maybe they don't even show their have much of an emotional life at all they're stuck in that sense they withstand and of course that gets something in the philosophy but as a whole picture it's imperfect. Would you say the same for the English word cynic?
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's well said about stoicism. I think it's the same for cynicism. So, you know, the idea of a modern cynic is somebody who, you know, has a lot of criticism but doesn't do anything about it, you know, is a lot of talk and critique and is enjoy showing people up or perhaps a little bit of Louvre.
00:06:07
Speaker
but doesn't actually have solutions or doesn't, you know, put the money where the mouth is, as it were. So, you know, cynicism, modern cynicism, in that sense, doesn't map on very well to ancient cynicism because cynicism was all action. I mean, it was a lot of talk, too. I mean, they put a lot of people down. They loved doing that, the cynics. But they were also, you know, they woke up every day, you know, homeless.
00:06:33
Speaker
barefoot, barely clad and with no food. So their job for the day was to find some, you know, they definitely were living it. They were living that sort of that lifestyle intentionally. And so, yeah, they weren't armchair, anything's they weren't armchair about their their beliefs.
00:06:56
Speaker
Were they always outsiders? Do you think that's an accurate claim that the cynics, they tended to be at the edges of society?
00:07:05
Speaker
I mean, I think on the whole, yes. But as all of us are, we're somehow like we're all on the spectrum to some degree. And the cynics fell on a spectrum too, where you do get cynics who are totally outrageous and like Diogenes, intentionally homeless, voluntary poverty.
00:07:27
Speaker
outrageous actions like masturbating in public, defecating in public, the exact sorts of things that humans are not supposed to do in polite company and civilized society. They did that all on purpose. But then you've got other guys like, you know, Dimonax, about whom Lucian writes. And, you know, according to Lucian, Dimonax was his teacher. He was a cynic. And Lucian's life of Dimonax is very, I mean,
00:07:54
Speaker
He's all but a statesman. I mean, he's like a man about town. He seems to kind of live out of doors, but of course everyone in Greece lived out of doors. He embraces all the austerities, according to Lucian, of the cynics, but yet he settles like public disputes. He speaks in the law courts. He's seen as sort of like an oracle that people go to
00:08:17
Speaker
to ask for advice. He's urbane quite literally, living in the city, but also kind of chic and slick. And Lucian says that he was well versed in all the poets, and he cultivated rhetoric in a way that was appealing to Lucian, but probably unlike the kind of rhetoric that Diogenes cultivated. So he's a much more civilized kind of cynic. Demetrius too, the friend of Seneca,
00:08:45
Speaker
was a little bit, I mean, he also was a street preacher, it seems, from the evidence that we have. But he was also, he also moved in kind of political circles. He was friends with the rich and famous, you know, probably invited to dine with them, but he associated with them. And he was actually involved with a bunch of guys who were bent on assassinating Nero, which actually included Seneca as well, which was mostly a stoic
00:09:11
Speaker
kind of movement to get rid of Nero, that whole conspiracy. So he had strange bedfellows himself. So yeah, there's a spectrum. But on the whole, I think, yes, you're right. They're kind of outsiders and on purpose. Right. Yeah. The connection to the stoic opposition is certainly interesting in
Cynicism vs. Stoicism: Virtue and Indifference
00:09:33
Speaker
Nero's time. And that's, I suppose,
00:09:36
Speaker
you do have the model of the cynic as an outsider, a critic, someone who's questioning these conventions, social conventions as arbitrary or something of that sort. But as you say, it's a continuum and there are cynics who don't have that sort of that rejection of convention that you see in Diogenes.
00:09:57
Speaker
I was just going to say perhaps not as full of rejection, but of course the cynics were also staunch conformists. We don't tend to think of them that way, but they were conformists in their own mind. They were conforming to a life according to nature.
00:10:12
Speaker
even perhaps more radically than the Stoics were. So they saw what they were up to as a life of conformity and a studied life of conformity. So let's see how much civilization I can do without. So it's a question of where they align their thought world. And it was with nature as opposed to culture, both with uppercase letters there.
00:10:39
Speaker
So you have one way to frame stoicism, of course, is that it the stoic life is also life according to nature. You also live according to nature. What does that that mean? That means for human beings living the virtuous life. And that amounts to
00:10:57
Speaker
managing what the Stoics called preferred indifference, this preferred indifference, well, essentially making good choices. And one way to describe the difference between the cynics and the Stoics of
00:11:14
Speaker
which there are many, but perhaps a fundamental difference is that the cynics don't have this idea that there are such a thing as preferred indifference. There's solely the life of virtue living in accordance with nature and things like wealth, health, pleasure, social status, which the Stoic might say is they're generally good, they're preferable, but one should never sacrifice them.
00:11:39
Speaker
For virtue, of course, the cynic line is those aren't good at all. Those have nothing to do with the life that those have nothing to do with nature understood as nature with its capital and the way things ought to be the telos of things. You think that's an adequate gloss?
00:11:55
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's absolutely terrific. You did better at that than I could have. I think that is accurate. The cynics are sort of stoics on steroids. I mean, you and I, or at least I couldn't. I don't know about you. I couldn't be a cynic. I admire them. And I think a lot of people admire them from afar, like even Seneca, admire Demetrius.
00:12:18
Speaker
from afar because of their single-mindedness and their commitment. I mean, they were all in. And they were sort of mascots in the cities in which they lived. They actually, you know, because they were so extreme and they actually could do what they did, people admired them for it as well as they had detractors too, of course. But stoicism is much more of the middle way that, you know, anybody can be a stoic. There's nothing preventing you from that. I mean,
00:12:45
Speaker
uh uh accept yourself um and your choices and the the cynics are are a harder a harder example to follow um that's kind of why i think of them as sort of extreme stoics so stoicism might be a middle way and and then maybe maybe maybe the cynics are what the buddha was before it became the buddha
00:13:07
Speaker
You know, he was a shramana. He was one of these like ascetics wandering in the forest, but then he figured out that, oh, that doesn't really do it. And so he became, as it were, a stoic to the cynic that he was before. I mean, just an analogy.
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. It's also, I think fits on nicely with the stoic philosopher Epictetus mentions the cynics as role models, especially Diogenes. But he counsels his students, that life is not for most of you, maybe all of you. And I think that captures that idea that
00:13:48
Speaker
Even Stoics can and did recognize the cynics as living good lives, lives that are worthwhile, but perhaps on their view, and this might be a difference between them and the Stoics, of course, that wasn't the life that most people should lead because of their personal constitution, social arrangements, what have you.
00:14:07
Speaker
Exactly. And Seneca has a great letter about this. And it's in the book, How to Say No. I translated it there, where without naming them, he criticizes philosophers who go to extremes and kind of wear it on the outside, the shaggy hair, the long beard with dobs of food in it.
00:14:31
Speaker
tatters for clothes. He says, who's going to want to be a philosopher if that's what you're looking at? I mean, that sort of sight and stench is not going to attract anybody. And he says instead, he says, be different on the inside. Let our outside, here's the Latin word frans, agree with everyone else. Let it conform. But on the inside, intus,
00:14:58
Speaker
let it be different. So that kind of encapsulates what you were saying before about the difference between stoicism and cynicism. I think it is his view, for instance. So Sinek was saying that even before. Well, do you have any favorite anecdotes or stories about the cynics? Well, a lot of them. Let's see.
00:15:26
Speaker
Oh, one that just pops into my head that's not in the book, but it came up in another context when I was writing about Thoreau. So at the beginning of Thoreau's Walden, you know, there's the famous kind of epigraph that says, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but I cock a doodle do. I don't sing an ode dejection, he says. I do my cock a doodle do like a shanticleer in the morning if only to wake my neighbors up.
00:15:52
Speaker
And there's a great, and most people have thought that's kind of an allusion to the medieval tale of Renard the fox and all of that. It's included in there. But there's a cynic anecdote that's similar to that as well. And I see a lot of cynic posturing on the rose part. And the cynic anecdote is that Diogenes would go to a concert and the guy would start singing. And then Diogenes would stand up and interrupt him like right away and say, hail Chanticleer.
00:16:19
Speaker
And the guy says, what do you mean? And of course, Chanticleer meaning of the rooster, a lector in Greek. And he says, well, as soon as you open your mouth, people get up and leave. People get up and leave. And it's hard to convey. In the Greek, the word to get up is the same word as to wake up, like wake up in the morning.
00:16:41
Speaker
So Diage's meant it as like a put down for the guy who's singing is so bad people stand up and get out of the concert hall. But the idea is also a cynic trope too, right, you know, to to actually like sing from the rooftops and wake people up, wake them out of their slumber. So I like that one.
00:17:01
Speaker
Boy, there's a lot of them. So maybe ask me again halfway through the interview and I'll think of it. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure more will come up. A classic one that I think is one of my favorites is just the story of Alexander the Great and Diogenes the cynic and Alexander, of course, wanting to meet this famous philosopher and Diogenes simply requesting as Alexander bumbles over that he
00:17:29
Speaker
start blocking the sun, which I just, of course, captures that rejection of social status, wealth, and power and inherent in cynicism. Right. Ask me for whatever you like. And Diogenes sitting there in front of his barrel or whatever it was, a pithos sunning himself, just step out of my sunshine, please. That's enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one.
Symbolism in Cynic Anecdotes
00:17:56
Speaker
Oh, yeah. There's a lot of them.
00:17:59
Speaker
uh wanking in public right of course that's outrageous enough and then somebody and he's doing it until somebody asks him what are you doing and he says and of course he's just waiting for it he's just waiting for somebody to ask him so he can say
00:18:15
Speaker
this, if only hunger were relieved by just rubbing one's stomach, you know, and it's like, it's perfect. Now, the problem with all these little anecdotes that we do have about diogenes, you probably know this, again, your listeners might not, is like, it's hard to know
00:18:32
Speaker
if they're historical because they form part of this larger tradition of made-up anecdotes about famous philosophers, but the cynics in particular called crayi. And in later antiquity, one of the rhetorical exercises that students would practice to kind of get good at writing and coming up with good witty banter for,
00:18:56
Speaker
social occasions, was to compose these Crayi. And so a lot of them could have could well have been just like made up after the fact. But I have to say this about that. People say, Oh, we don't really know if Diogenes did and said all those things. I'm gonna say it doesn't matter. Because, you know, the legend of Diogenes and company,
00:19:17
Speaker
It became a movement and had a life of its own such that somebody could write something later that was so to the point and conveys the philosophy of cynicism so perfectly, who cares if it ever happened? It's terrific. It's a very teachable, memorable saying. So anyway, that's that.
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, no, that seems exactly right to me. Of course, if you're, there is a sense in which many of these figures are a combination of factual history and myth. And it's a question of, you know, what are we up to when we're talking about them? Often we're trying to pull out
00:20:06
Speaker
lessons or use their lives as some illustration of a larger principle. And I think there sometimes there is the issue that, of course, if that mythical character is doing things that are impossible, then maybe they're not so useful in illustrating principles about how to live. But nonetheless, I think, at least in the case of Diogenes, he's served a useful, both philosophical and practical purpose for many people.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah, another one of one that falls into that category is like the consultation of the Delphic Oracle. So famously, you know, a friend of Socrates goes to the Delphic Oracle and says mirror mirror on the wall, who's the wisest of them all. And the Oracle says Socrates. And so Socrates, his friend, his name is Kyra Fon, comes back and tells Socrates tells everyone the Oracle says you're the wisest one of all. And so Socrates then concludes, well, that must be because I don't know anything.
00:21:06
Speaker
So true wisdom lies in ignorance or awareness of one's own lack of knowledge. So Diogenes also has a Delphic Oracle story.
00:21:21
Speaker
It goes back to when he and his father were apparently kicked out of town for defacing the currency. So his dad was a banker and they were doing something, shaving a little bit of silver off the side or who knows what they were doing. And his dad got put in jail for it and Diogenes was exiled.
00:21:39
Speaker
Again, this is all the story. So in exile, what do you do when you have no livelihood and you don't know where to turn next? You go to the Delphic Oracle, you consult it, and you say, what should I do? And the Delphic Oracle replied, deface the currency. And Diogenes said, well, wait a minute. I just did that. I just did that and got chucked out of Sinope, where I live. And then, again, the story turns on this. He says, aha.
00:22:07
Speaker
it's defaced the currency as para karaksai ton nomisma in Greek. And that word nomisma can mean currency in both senses, just as it does today. It can mean actual currency like, you know, cash on the nose. Or it can mean cultural currency, what is accepted as, you know, legal tender and behavior and manners and ethics. And so Diogenes took it upon himself with Delphic approval
00:22:34
Speaker
to deface the cultural currency of his time. And Julian in the book, Julian makes a big deal about that calling from Delphi to be the way he was as sanctifying it and legitimizing his life and philosophy. But again, did that happen?
00:22:56
Speaker
People consulted the Delphic Oracle all the time in moments of crisis personal and states did the same thing But it doesn't matter because it's a great story and it you know It gives you purpose and thinking about you know, you wake up hungry in the morning. Why am I doing this? Uh-huh got a Delphic mandate, you know like Socrates to do this Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. So what?
Cynic Practices: Asceticism and Autonomy
00:23:20
Speaker
If you're thinking about the cynic life, it's a philosophy of life, sort of an account of how to live well, what the good life looks like and how to live well. And to what extent does it have other philosophies of life, stoicism, skepticism, what have you, a training program? What's an account of either exercises, philosophical techniques for becoming better, for living well.
00:23:48
Speaker
Hmm. I mean, the cynics definitely had a training program. I mean, they gave us that word, oskasis. Oskasis in Greek means training. And it's where the English word, you probably know, ascetic comes from. So, you know, they weren't the world's first ascetics by any means, the cynics, but they gave us the word. And the word actually comes from the domain of wrestling and sports.
00:24:15
Speaker
So it literally does mean exercise and training as an Olympic athlete would train. So they they viewed their kind of their life living, living their life close in accordance with nature and testing themselves physically. They had a word for it, panos, like hard work. They did that on purpose to train the body so that
00:24:39
Speaker
but voluntarily to train right so that when push came to shove and you didn't have a choice to be without or to have food or whatever it was you you could endure it because you know your muscles were strong you know your ethical muscles your mental resources were strong and you could resist the kind of
00:24:58
Speaker
the whims of fortune, you know, you didn't know what could happen tomorrow. So it was a way of being prepared for whatever would come your way. And that kind of training was, was, well, actually, Diogenes says it's also pleasurable.
00:25:14
Speaker
Like you actually learn to like doing without and it becomes kind of a, I don't know what it becomes, not pleasure, but like, well, he says pleasure, uses the word pleasure, but like a game. So are you better than yourself? Let's see. Are you really better than yourself? That whole notion of being the master of yourself, controlling yourself. They thought, how far could we push that? And how much can I do without? And it became like a challenge.
00:25:43
Speaker
What is the end game of that? I'm not sure. For the Stoics, the Stoics have a much more elaborate, comprehensive worldview about human's place in the natural world and in the social world and everything. They thought all those things through. Cynics really didn't.
00:26:03
Speaker
far as I can see, it wasn't their shtick. So, but anyway, they went to great extent to train themselves to be able to make it. So in a post apocalyptic world, where all the other humans are gone, there would be cynics, you know, cynics, dogs left over at the end of it.
00:26:23
Speaker
That's too funny. I suppose you have that idea of building self-control by exposing yourself to voluntary discomfort. And the cynics do that on a whole other level. It's like voluntary discomfort. We're not going to sleep. Seneca says, go some nights sleeping on the floor. And the cynics say, just don't have a house. You don't need to go a few nights. It's a matter of
00:26:50
Speaker
really exposing oneself to the discomforts that are closer to the extreme end that one might experience in life, not just sort of moving in that knob just a little bit, the cynics go the whole way. Yeah. I think the cynics saw themselves as like exemplars. I mean, like examples, like they made an example of themselves because most people won't bother
00:27:19
Speaker
So they were extreme on purpose, more so on purpose, to draw attention, to kind of like swing the pendulum back or something. Stoics were much more balanced and reasonable in that way.
00:27:34
Speaker
So, but I guess you, to some extent you touched on this already, but what is that end game? That's almost the, you know, experiencing voluntary discomfort is almost a defensive type strategy where you, you can live well, even in terrible circumstances. Like that, those external circumstances won't harm you. You'll have the self-control required to act well, but then
00:27:59
Speaker
there's that question. What does acting well look like? What's the positive vision of life that's not merely like, you know, withstanding discomfort, suffering for its own sake? Good point. Autonomy, I think. I mean, they were into autonomy and what they called outarcea, you know, sufficing for yourself and not being dependent upon anybody or anything.
00:28:25
Speaker
that can be taken away at any moment. So I think that they, they, they felt free. I mean, freedom, you know, autonomy, freedom, Altar Kaya, all these things are, I think, part of what they were after in their extreme way. And, you know, they had to have it. I mean, how can you wake up every morning, you know, without a place to live with not knowing where your next meal is coming from?
00:28:52
Speaker
and be content and be happy and be able to do it for your whole life. And cynicism was a long-lived, I won't call it really a philosophy, but a way of life that lasted till late antiquity, until it kind of morphed into Christian monasticism.
00:29:10
Speaker
So, and that had a very different motivation though, many of the, many of the trappings and many of the same ideas of like training went into it. It, it, it kept a lot of people happy. Maybe they were dissatisfied, so dissatisfied with cultural forms and cultural norms that this was, you know, uh, paradise compared to that. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose it's important to remember the,
00:29:37
Speaker
Many of these ancient philosophies, when they thought about freedom, it wasn't so much the capacity to do whatever one liked or the capacity to have multiple options open. It was rather a vision where you have the desires you ought to have and then acted on those. So for the cynics, they might see so many of our
00:30:01
Speaker
desires are arbitrary matters of social convention. And that's why you see them do all these outrageous things, at least classically, to signify the rejection of those conventions. Right. And if you don't have anything, nobody can take anything away from you. Seneca says something interesting that's
00:30:25
Speaker
I don't know how stoic it really is. It probably is, you know, card-carrying stoic, but he says somewhere in one of his letters, cease to hope and you'll cease to fear because hope is dependent on the future. It's like you're, and if you don't hope,
00:30:47
Speaker
you won't be disappointed. So there's something also in freedom that I think is conducive to equanimity and just living in the present. Nobody is miserable in the present if that's exactly where you are and that's where exactly you want to be. And I think a lot of the cynic austerity was about living in that present, I mean, moment to moment and abiding in it.
00:31:15
Speaker
I mean, it almost sounds religious. It was perhaps more so than it was a philosophy. There isn't a lot of arguments in cynicism, philosophical ones. In stoicism, there's tons. I mean, yeah, you've got physics, you've got the logic, you've got the ethics, you know, the whole thing is like an egg and it all works together. And they like very sophisticated theories, the stoics, cynics, they didn't even care. They didn't even care about education or, you know, singing and dancing and the poets and all that. That was like they said, don't bother.
00:31:45
Speaker
Why bother? What good is it to you? I think one of the images that Seneca attributes to Demetrius the cynic is that Demetrius was always fond of saying, Seneca says, it's better to know a couple of wrestling moves rather than a whole encyclopedia of them because you only need to know the move you need to win the bout.
00:32:10
Speaker
You don't need any more than that. So just know a couple of good tricks that work for you and work really well. And don't hypothesize and cultivate all the possibilities. Don't overthink it. Just, you know, you know, yeah, keep it simple. And Seneca says he admired Demetrius for that. It was one of his signature sayings. Right, right. Yeah, he says the same thing for philosophy. You just need the philosophical moves that help you win, essentially. Yeah.
00:32:40
Speaker
You mentioned earlier the cynics following in the footsteps of Socrates. I always think that's a useful frame to understand these philosophies because, of course, the skeptics, they took some parts of Socrates' life, his philosophy, and saw themselves as the true successors of the man.
Cynicism's Practical Philosophy Compared to Aristotle and Plato
00:32:59
Speaker
And then you have, of course, the Stoics doing the same thing. How did the cynics follow in Socrates' footsteps?
00:33:06
Speaker
Well, because they were almost exclusively focused on ethics, as probably was the historical Socrates, even though we get the reports from Plato that he was reading Anaxagoras when he was a young guy and all that sort of stuff.
00:33:24
Speaker
that exclusive focus on ethics, the urbanity or the urban setting of it, and the out-of-doors nature of cynic lifestyle,
00:33:38
Speaker
Those things in particular are very Socratic. The use of analogies and comparisons from everyday life, even really lowbrow comparisons that Socrates was famous for and got criticized for by his highfalutin, high society friends and patrons. So washer women, cobblers, carpenters, stonemasons. The cynics were very much about that kind of everyday down and dirty
00:34:07
Speaker
kind of comparisons and philosophy in the gutter, as it were. So, I mean, in those ways, it just seems like it's spiritually, as it were, a closer succession. And the fact that they weren't, they didn't claim to teach anybody anything. I mean, really, they were, it's all about example, all about, you know, Beos, the way of life.
00:34:35
Speaker
those things seem to me to be Socratic, more so than the later developments in stoicism in the academy or Aristotle for that matter.
00:34:46
Speaker
That's not to knock Aristotle, Plato, the Stoics. I mean, it's amazing the direction that philosophy did take after Socrates and that Socrates inspired it and was always like the thread running through it all. It all does all boil down to how to live a life, how to have a life.
00:35:08
Speaker
All that is, all the superstructure of philosophy is subservient to that basic thing. The cynic said, that's enough for us. That basic, how to live a life, how to have a life, how to be happy or content is the point. And so it's like, actually, famously, cynicism is said to be a shortcut to virtue. I think a Stoic actually said that. It's the shortcut to virtue, so you don't have to go through all that.
00:35:35
Speaker
you know, the doctrines and mastering physical theories and all this sort of stuff to get there. It's like, again, I mentioned Buddha before, but it's like, I think the Buddha told some sort of parable about a raft. Like if you're crossing a river, you have a raft, right? And you get to the other side of the river with the raft, only a fool would put it on his back and start carrying it around.
00:36:00
Speaker
wherever you go, once you've reached there, it's like discarded, you don't need it anymore. And it was sort of like, that's what the Dharma is, right? You just like, get rid of it once you once you've made it to the other side. The cynics were more of that mentality about what was useful or not for for a good life.
00:36:19
Speaker
You only need the theory in so far as it's conducive to living well. And perhaps another Socratic connection is that Socrates himself was not the theorizer, he was a student who put his work into the systematic philosophical worldviews. And you could think of that as a mistake and perhaps on this an extent. Yep. And he was more interested in showing other people up.
00:36:46
Speaker
than making, you know, well, it seems, than making positive statements. And the cynics share that as well. They love to show people up, you know, not for its own sake, but because, well, people need showing up. I think that the cynics were optimists in many ways. I mean, I don't think they were, there's a lot of absurdity in cynicism. You know, they seem to embrace the absurd and see the absurd in,
00:37:12
Speaker
and day-to-day life, but I think fundamentally they are still rationalists. There are a couple of anecdotes about that. You know, Diogenes says somewhere that, you know, you have to use either logos to live your life, reason, or you might as well use a brachos. And brachos can mean two things. It can mean like a noose,
00:37:36
Speaker
Like you might as well hang yourself if you're not going to be a rational person because you're never going to solve any problems or live a good life. Or it could mean also reigns. So you either need to use your logos, your reason, or you need to actually have like a straitjacket on to prevent you from doing what you're not supposed to do because you can't control yourself. So I think there's something about cynicism that still puts a premium on rationality and the human ability to choose.
00:38:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I suppose that's one of the central Socratic threads that runs through most of these philosophies is that, you know, for the stoics, if you change how you think you can make better decisions, live that life according to nature.
Modern Examples of Cynicism
00:38:21
Speaker
And you can manage your emotional life as well. Skeptics, they think the same. They just think you need to hold those competing views in mind and not embrace either in order to find that tranquil state. Right.
00:38:38
Speaker
Who do you think of, or who comes to mind as the cynics today, or at least people who have some of the most cynic elements either in their philosophy or their life? Well, take away the fancy suits and all the makeup and the entertainment
00:39:02
Speaker
aspect of it or the extreme entertainment aspect of it. And stand-up comedians are great cynics. I mean, Stephen Colbert, maybe. So stand-up late night comedy has a good cynic aspect to it, I think. Maybe it leans more toward that modern sense of cynicism that we were talking about before. I don't know. But one of my favorites that I write about in another book,
00:39:28
Speaker
that I have is Mr. Money Mustache. Have you ever heard of Mr. Money Mustache?
00:39:33
Speaker
I know of a surrounding mustache. Yes. Okay. So he's like a guy who, he's like a dude who like in his early forties was able to retire maybe even in his thirties because he made enough money to retire. And then he figured out that you only need $24,000 a year to live. And so if you invest and expect a 4% return, you can, if you only need like $600,000 to have saved up to be able to live off, you know,
00:40:02
Speaker
the income of your investments for the rest of your life, $24,000 a year. So he basically has a website, he gives like, you know, investment advice, but he also gives a lot of lifestyle advice. And it's a whole cult of mustachians who kind of do the same thing. His real name is Peter Adaney. But he's kind of he's kind of like a modern day cynic. A bunch of years ago, there's a really annoying guy
00:40:32
Speaker
Oh.
00:40:33
Speaker
What was his real name? Colin Bevin, who did a stunt to live with no impact in an apartment in Manhattan. And he dragged his wife and his baby daughter along with him. And so progressively over the course of a year, they tried to do without carbon footprint impact. So, you know, no paper diapers, they shut off the
00:41:03
Speaker
electricity at their apartment eventually, and he made a film about it called No Impact Man, or somebody made a film about him. I don't know if you're familiar with that. You know, that kind of like stunt mentality of doing something to, or that guy who, what's that guy who supersized me guy? That guy who ate all that, you know, Morgan something, you know, he ate all that junk food just to show how bad it is for you.
00:41:33
Speaker
You know, that's kind of, I think that's a similar impulse to what the cynics were up to, you know, to do something more so to draw attention to a point, to sacrifice yourself almost, but make it very public to draw attention to something. Yeah, I suppose media and the internet give you new opportunities to do that, to share your at least cynic style message with many more people.
00:42:02
Speaker
But you asked the wrong person about modern anything because I don't really pay attention. I don't know how to use my phone. I don't know. I don't even know what's out there. There's probably so many cynic type people on TikTok or whatever people do these days. And I just don't know about it. It would be interesting to hear from somebody who does, who follows that, because I bet you'd find a lot of it.
00:42:29
Speaker
Do other philosophers or writers, artists come to mind? Not necessarily modern ones, but people who you think also captured some of that cynic spirit. Well, yes, but he's actually, this guy's a real philosopher too, in a way, but he's not, I don't think he gets a lot of traction amongst academic philosophers because he doesn't bother to
00:42:50
Speaker
substantiate every jot and tittle that he points out. Byung Chul Han. I don't know if you've ever read any Byung Chul Han. He's a Germano-Korean philosopher, a Korean-born, writes in German.
00:43:04
Speaker
lives in Berlin. I love that guy. He writes teeny tiny books that you can read before you go to bed, the whole book. But they're aphoristic. It's like reading Nietzsche almost. They're very declarative. But his cultural critique of the digital world we live in and our willingly
00:43:25
Speaker
our willingness to give up our autonomy and our humanity to neoliberalism or whatever else, whatever God that is out there is remarkable. So he strikes me as, you know, cynic-like. And I like his work. Interesting, interesting. I suppose to some extent, I haven't read any of his work.
00:43:50
Speaker
But you see, maybe Nietzsche has some cynic elements, of course, also some non-cynic ones. Yeah, there's a lot of cynic posturing in Nietzsche. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. That provocateur type approach to philosophy. Right.
00:44:09
Speaker
I mean, but Nietzsche was a Nietzsche was also a hypochondriac. And he was ascetic in his own way. But yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it was so learned. If anything, he's it's a very cultivated cynicism. Somebody like Thoreau might be a little closer to it.
00:44:37
Speaker
because he actually, like, did the experiment and lived in the cabin. I mean, a lot of people can't stand Thoreau, but a lot of his rhetoric, his put-downs, his puns. The cynics were great punsters, by the way. I mean, I suggested it a couple of times with some of the anecdotes I mentioned with the, you know, the Chanticlea, Elector, but also the Lagos, Bracos, Pawn, but there's tons of them in the surviving Creae, and Thoreau was big on that word play.
00:45:07
Speaker
to score points to his opponent's disadvantage. Yeah, that's excellent. Well, we touched on this at the very beginning, but I think it's to return to any more thoughts on what are some of the central similarities between stoicism and cynicism as you see it, and also what's that, those crucial lines of difference?
Virtue in Cynicism and Stoicism
00:45:33
Speaker
Yeah. Well, maybe that virtue is, I mean, I don't honestly, I don't know as much about stoicism as many people you've had on this show. So I'm going to I'm going to refrain from pontificating here, but certainly that virtue is sufficient for happiness. They share that the living according to nature,
00:45:56
Speaker
though that becomes defined differently by each of them. The Stoics are much more sophisticated in their definition of that, what they mean by nature and in its many aspects. And they're frankly more useful in that way. The focus on ethics. I mean, those are the things I see that are closest. I mean, cynicism, again, a shortcut to virtue.
00:46:27
Speaker
It could get old quickly to be a cynic, where stoicism has a depth and it's a system that you can latch onto at many different points and explore further and refine and think on. And it's got a longer tradition of that reflection. I mean, the cynics were oralists. They didn't write anything down.
00:46:47
Speaker
So that's one problem. I mean, there are tragedies attributed to Diogenes and some cynic type people. They invented the satire, the menopoeian satire. So it's not like they were completely
00:47:05
Speaker
not literary, but on the whole, they were oralists. So that's a problem and a difference in the way we were able to access them and appreciate them from this point in time.
00:47:18
Speaker
Mm hmm. Right, right. Yeah, I suppose for people who are interested in stoicism, they found it useful knowing about cynicism, I think is both a useful or at least an interesting challenge and I think can provide maybe some other forms of models, exemplars to think to think through. So you have the challenge side. There's that question.
00:47:45
Speaker
when are Stoics or any other philosopher taking convention too seriously as a guide to what the virtuous acts are? In Stoicism in particular you have ideas of role ethics, which of those roles should one take seriously is a serious question you get from the cynics. And then in terms of exemplars, as we've been saying, you have
00:48:10
Speaker
the model of Diogenes, Demetrius, Demonax, and so on that I think can be useful to think through. Yeah. Maybe the cynics are lazy Stoics. Maybe that's what they are. Stoics on steroids, but also lazy Stoics. I don't know. That seems to be a contradiction, but they are intellectually lazy. They just didn't care.
00:48:38
Speaker
Yeah, in some ways, if you want to be more negative against the cynics, it does seem like they were more parasitical on people around them. They're more of a social parasite than the Stoics were. There wasn't this model of what is it to be a good citizen. And I think that one always does need outsiders to play a role in a society to challenge it, question convention, be exemplars for ways things could be different.
Cynics as Truth-Tellers and Cultural Conscience
00:49:06
Speaker
But there is also that concern that
00:49:10
Speaker
There's something that means to be a good citizen. That means living in the city, even if you're not of it. Yeah. Yeah, it is kind of funny. They beg for their food, but they prize autonomy. What Dodgeneys has reported to have said that the thing that he values most is freedom of speech, so frankness of speech.
00:49:36
Speaker
you can say whatever you want if you're not beholden to anybody. And they thought that was pretty important. I mean, we don't always say what we really think. I mean, we couldn't all the time because, well, it would be a social disaster, a political disaster if we actually said out loud all the things that we really think. And the cynics were able to do that in a way that others couldn't because they
00:50:03
Speaker
you know they weren't beholden to anybody so there's something beneficial in that and it was like it was accepted kind of like oh a cynic can say that it's kind of like stand-up comedy sometimes i watch that like late night late night television i said oh my gosh i teach in the academy right i i couldn't say those things
00:50:24
Speaker
I could not be a stand-up comedian in front of my classes, not that I would want to be, because, you know, you'd be cancelled. I mean, you can't say those things in this arena, but you can say them on TV in that context because you're a late-night comedian and there's all sorts of expectations about it. So I think the cynics may have been some sort of like cultural conscience of
00:50:46
Speaker
in a way, too, that they could do it. The raving cynic on the corner telling the truth to everyone who passed by. It's good to hear that once in a while. Who else is going to tell me that I've got bad breath and a wart on my nose and that my inside ethic, my lifestyle is even worse than that. Who's going to say that to you except a cynic on the side of the road? And can you take it? Yeah.
00:51:16
Speaker
I think that the connection to stand-up comedians is on point because they are a group of people who often are able to point out truths that one cannot in ordinary conversation and do it in a way that, of course, they have their own social sphere to do it well, but there's an art, a kind of skill.
00:51:40
Speaker
telling a good joke that would be completely off color in most contexts and even sometimes is off color in the comedic context. And that's a way to reveal the way that things really are in a way that's almost not as crude or as dangerous as otherwise might be.
00:52:07
Speaker
So here's an overwrought and overthought statement. So at the end of the city state, the polis falls into decline, old comedy goes away, new comedy comes in, and it's just basically melodrama. It's like a soap opera, Menander and blah, blah, blah.
00:52:25
Speaker
who steps in to fill the void for old comedies like social critique and telling the truth, right? Freedom of speech, it's the cynics. So yeah, maybe we are right that the standup comedian thing is close. Excellent. Well, is there anything else you'd like to add? No, no. So yeah, I enjoyed talking about the cynics.
00:52:53
Speaker
Yeah, very good. Thanks for coming on and we'll have to maybe touch on animals or farming at another time. Love to do that. Thanks for listening to Stoa Conversations. Please give us a rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify and share it with a friend. If you want to dive deeper still, search Stoa in the App Store or Play Store for a complete app with routines, meditations, and lessons designed to help people become more
00:53:22
Speaker
Stoic. And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientlyre.com. And finally, please get in touch with us. Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.