Cynic School of Ancient Greek Philosophy Texts

The Cynic movement began in Athens in the 4th century BCE. Antisthenes, a disciple of Socrates, is counted as its founder, and its emblematic practitioner was Diogenes of Sinope. Cynicism was a way of living rather than a formal institution with fixed doctrines.

The Cynics held that life in accordance with nature (κατὰ φύσιν) was the path to human excellence (ἀρετή) and to happiness (εὐδαιμονία), and they regarded the conventions of society (νόμος) — wealth, power, and status among them — as artificial obstacles standing in the way. To win freedom they practised rigorous training (ἄσκησις) and self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια), embracing poverty, hardship, and a life without luxuries; Diogenes of Sinope famously made his home in a storage jar.

A defining practice was παρρησία, frank speech. The Cynics used blunt and often shocking words and actions to expose what they took for public folly, rejected political hierarchies, and declared themselves citizens of the world (κοσμοπολίται), treating the state and its institutions as sources of corruption. They scorned abstract theory and rhetoric, treating philosophy as a short road to ἀρετή, something to be demonstrated in action and in the example of a life.

The school's figures form a short chain. Antisthenes (c. 446–366 BCE), a disciple of Socrates, fixed its ethical focus on practice over theory. Diogenes of Sinope (c. 404–323 BCE) became the archetypal Cynic, his extreme asceticism and provocative public behaviour defining the movement's image. Crates of Thebes (c. 365–285 BCE) was the teacher of Zeno of Citium, who would go on to found Stoicism.

Without a formal structure, Cynicism was carried by itinerant practitioners from the 4th century BCE into the early centuries of the Common Era, reaching its height with the fame of Diogenes. Much of its force was absorbed into Stoicism through Zeno's studies under Crates, and the tradition saw a revival in the Roman world of the 1st century CE. By late antiquity some critics, the emperor Julian among them, complained that contemporary Cynics had abandoned the movement's original ascetic rigour.