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Title: Cynical Lessons
Author: Alejandro de Acosta
Date: 2011, July
Language: en
Topics: The Anvil Review, review, cynicism
Source: Retrieved on March 21st, 2015 from http://theanvilreview.org/print/cynical-lessons/

Alejandro de Acosta

Cynical Lessons

“There were always men who practiced this philosophy. For it seems to be

in some ways a universal philosophy, and the most natural.”

– Julian the Apostate

1

Some months ago, I discovered a series of books on ancient philosophies

produced by the University of California Press, with lovely details of

Baroque paintings reproduced on the covers. The titles read: Stoicism,

Epicureanism, Neoplatonism, Ancient Scepticism … Cynics. That last title

immediately drew my attention: Cynics and not Cynicism. It turned out

that Cynics makes explicit reference to anarchist ideas in a way that is

both intelligent and important to at least some of us. (I will return to

this intersection).

The choice of the title Cynics for William Desmond’s contribution was

probably only meant to avoid confusion, but it also suggests a way to

read the book so as to learn not merely of the Cynics but from them. Why

is it not called Cynicism? True, from one point of view it is perfectly

easy to say that there is Cynicism because we can list tenets held in

common by Cynics. Textbooks, encyclopedias and dictionaries do this: in

any of them we can learn that these people favored what Desmond calls

“carefree living in the present”[1]; and that, to accomplish it, they

practiced a generalized rejection of social customs (Desmond catalogs

this rejection in delightful detail: it includes customs concerning

clothing, housing, diet, sex and marriage, slavery, work …) in the

direction of a simplification of life.[2] (This was somewhat more

confusingly referred to as living in accord with nature).

But already in the ancient world, Diogenes Laertius, author of the great

gossip-book of ancient philosophers, commented: “we will go on to append

the doctrines which they held in common — if, that is, we decide that

Cynicism is really a philosophy, and not, as some maintain, just a way

of life.”[3] One of the perpetual question marks hanging next to the

Cynics’ status as philosophers is their common rejection of intellectual

confusion. The term typhos (smoke, vapor) rightly emphasized by Desmond

sums this up nicely. It was used, he writes, “to denote the delirium of

popular ideas and conventions” (244). Typhos also included the

“technical language” of philosophers: “the best cure” for it “is to

speak simply” (127).

In any case, there is also certainly something called cynicism. Desmond

consciously capitalizes the word when it is a matter of the school, and

leaves it uncapitalized when it is a matter of what could be called the

ambient attitude of a place and time — something people definitely live,

but in no way choose or wish for. Something like that seems to be what

Deleuze and Guattari were after in their recurring references to a

special relation between capitalism and cynicism in the Anti-Oedipus:

cynicism as the correlate of modern bad conscience, “accompanied by a

strange piety.”[4] Cynicism, for them, is not so much the ideology of

capitalism, as it is a congeries of behaviors and attitudes secreted by

the capitalist socius, the apparent apathy that is ever becoming real,

but never for all that passing into a reasoned or passionate way of

life. It is rather the default lifestyle of those for whom a way of life

(in any interesting sense of the phrase) is impossible.[5]

In light of this, I propose that perhaps the most interesting

perspective is to say that there is no Cynicism, that there is cynicism,

and that there are (or at least were) Cynics, as individuals.

Whereas the usual philosophical guidebook (and, worse, the usual

philosophical conversation) starts with the Great Question “what is …”,

I propose instead the question “who is …” Who is a Cynic? This question

never disappears: even when we find great commonalities between

different Cynics, we are still dealing with its familiar variant: “Who

is the real Cynic?” We know that Cynics first appeared in the Greece of

Socrates and Plato, and that there were Cynics well into Christian

times. How do we know this? As with other ancient schools, its

inventors, creators of a way of life, wrote nothing, or their writings

are lost. We know of them through what is now called doxography:

collections of sayings and opinions. Desmond recompiles and rearranges

the doxographies charmingly, proving the point that if it is philosophy

as a way of life that we are interested in, perhaps a few anecdotes

about a singular character are as valuable as a short treatise or a

letter to a friend. (I recall here Nietzsche’s gnomic proposition: “It

is possible to present the image of a man in three anecdotes”[6]).

In behavior and intent, The Cynics we know of were “missionary” (as

Pierre Hadot has put it).[7] Their rejection of customs seems to have

had an essentially performative, confrontational aspect. Desmond

illustrates this as follows:

… the ancient Cynic could be stereotyped as a wild man who stood on the

corner piercing passers-by with his glances, passing remarks to all and

sundry, but reserving his bitterest scorn for the elites who parade by

in purple and chariots, living unnatural lives, and trampling on the

natural equality of man. (187)

Such confrontations in public places were one way in which the Cynic way

of life was communicated. How does one become a Cynic? By example,

obviously; by means of a model. Now, this anecdote tells of a more

intimate communication:

Metrocles had been studying with Theophrastus, the successor to

Aristotle and head of the Lyceum, a taxonomist and classificatory

thinker with a specialty in botany. Once while declaiming Metrocles

farted audibly and was so ashamed that he shut himself off from public

view and thought of starving himself to death. But Crates visited him,

fed him with lupin-beans, and advanced various arguments to convince him

that his action was not wrong or unnatural, and had been for the best in

fact. Then Crates capped his exhortation with a great fart of his own.

“From that day on Metrocles started to listen to Crates’ discourses and

became a capable man in philosophy.”[8] (28)

This intimate aspect is not emphasized in Desmond’s book, perhaps for

lack of evidence. One could go a long ways in the direction of answering

the question “Who can be a Cynic?” by considering the status of customs

and laws from the perspective of how people have become capable of

subverting them. I do not mean conferring a special status on

transgression as a social or philosophical category, but rather becoming

curious about who it is that grasps the instability of mores,

conventions, laws and so on, and how they become capable of selectively

ignoring them.

2

Consider then this couple: unusual public behavior / anecdote

documenting the same. As Desmond points out, a typical chreia or

anecdote related an action followed by a witty, insightful, or bluntly

truthful utterance. It would seem that the anecdote was simultaneously a

spoken rhetorical device and a genre of literature, both in close

relation to what is best about gossip. There were many compilations of

such anecdotes in the ancient world. It is not hard to imagine that

these anthologies were compiled so as to amuse the curious; but they

could also have brought about, at a distance and thanks to a certain

sort of reading, the transmission of a model that public harangues and

private obscenities can communicate face to face, body to body. I mean

the imitation of unusual behaviors, and, more importantly, a stimulation

to invent new ones relevant to one’s own life. This literary

transmission of the Cynic life has surely happened many times and in

many ways.

Long after the first generations came lengthier written texts either

advocating the Cynical way of life or at least presenting it in a

favorable light. But by then the writers’ commitment to the way of life

was in question. It is one version of the question “Who is the real

Cynic?” Desmond discusses, though does not promote, a common distinction

between original “hard” Cynics (Diogenes, Crates, Hipparchia) who lived

the life and derivative “soft” Cynics, who, fascinated by it, merely

wrote about it (Lucian, Dio Chrysostom). It is, of course, as a distant

echo of this supposed merely literary presence of the school that the

term “cynic” reappears as an ordinary noun, and eventually as a

pejorative term, bringing the question “who?” full circle from punctual

designation to anonymous epithet.

One example of the richness of this question’s persistence in the

literary transmission of Cynicism is Lucian’s The Death of Peregrinus.

Desmond mentions it briefly; I will take it up in some detail. In this

satire we learn of the life and spectacular death of the “ill-starred”

Peregrinus the Cynic.[9] As the satire opens, Theagenes, a fearful,

crying Cynic (?) gives a hoary speech in praise of Peregrinus; then a

nameless, laughing man mounts the same platform to tell the truth. (This

man is not identified as a Cynic). He dismisses Theagnes’ praise as well

as his tears. Instead he offers his laughter, and another perspective on

Peregrinus. He details, among other things, how Peregrinus started life

as a good-for-nothing, becoming a parricide in exile after strangling

his own father for no reason other than the inconvenience of caring for

an old man. In exile Peregrinus eventually transformed himself, managing

to become a well-respected Christian leader. As such, he was imprisoned,

and received all of their support. Once freed, he betrayed the

Christians. Setting off again, he became a Cynic and trained in ascetic

exercises. These were the ponoi, practices Cynics would use to loosen

the bonds of custom: Peregrinus shaved half his head, smeared his face

with mud, masturbated in public, beat and was beaten with a fennel cane,

etc. Eventually his love of glory and attention led him to his famous

self-immolation, the event that Lucian ruthlessly mocks as a failed

apotheosis. Having publically announced it years in advance, Peregrinus

killed himself by jumping into an enormous pyre before countless

witnesses at the Olympic festival. This was purportedly done to show

others that they need not fear death. Lucian, now present as the

narrator, places himself, laughing, at the scene of the pyre, describing

Peregrinus and Theagenes as pitiful actors. Lucian is not only

unimpressed: he calls the witnesses “idiots,” and retires. In the scenes

of the aftermath, Lucian converses with curious passers-by and

latecomers, answering their idle questions with preposterous and

contradictory exaggerations.

It seems that, for Lucian, to say one is a Cynic, even to have trained

in the ascetic exercises, means nothing special if in the present one

continues to demonstrate vanity. And nothing could be more vain than

capitalizing on one’s own suicide by announcing it years in advance.

Here Lucian, who never called himself a Cynic, shows himself capable of

wearing that mask in his satire. He addresses an interlocutor:

… I can hear you crying out, as you well might: “Oh, the stupidity! Oh,

the thirst for renown! Oh — “, all the other things we tend to say about

them. Well, you can say all this at a distance and much more safely; but

I said it right by the fire, and even before that in a large crowd of

listeners. Some of these became angry, the ones who were impressed by

the old man’s lunacy; but there were others who laughed at him too. Yet

I can tell you I was nearly torn to pieces by the Cynics... [10]

The entire story revolves around the question: “who?” Lucian’s

Peregrinus cynically moves from low-life to moral Christian to ascetic

Cynic to vainglorious blowhard. Is this progression Cynical? Or is

Lucian’s laughter more of a Cynic effect, however he may have lived?

Desmond, for his part, suggests that much of Lucian’s satire may be a

“hatchet job,” such as the account of the parricide, for example.

Considering this takes us one turn further into the maze of the

question: “who?” What if it is Lucian, the writer, who is the

vainglorious one, envious of Peregrinus’ performance, its practical

philosophy? What if, for example, Peregrinus had an excellent reason to

take his own life, and opted to use his death to teach a final lesson,

one the results of which he could not live to see? Could that not be the

opposite of vanity? For me this ambiguity manifests a tension between

way of life and philosophy, or, again, between living according to

nature and a missionary urge to harangue others to do the same.[10]

Lucian calls Peregrinus an actor, his suicide a “performance.”

Discussing the history of the well-worn metaphor of the world as

theater, the philologist Ernst Robert Curtius traces it back to comments

in Plato’s Laws about humans as puppets of the gods, or to a phrase in

his Philebus about the “tragedy and comedy of life.” But then he notes:

“In the popular lectures on philosophy (’diatribes’) of the Cynics, the

comparison of man to an actor became a much-used cliché.”[11] This story

of origins only becomes interesting when we read between the lines in

Curtius, noticing that it must have been the Cynics who began using this

metaphor without reference to the divine, and perhaps not as a metaphor

at all. Simply put: everyone is an actor. Desmond writes: “if the self

is substantial and secure in itself, then, like a good actor, it can put

on and off many masks, playing many roles without dissipating or

compromising itself, just as a good actor can appear in many guises

while remaining the same person beneath” (182).[12] Indeed, the

reception of this idea, metaphor or not, which Curtius traces from the

Romans through the Middle Ages to Shakespeare, Baltasar Gracián, and

Calderón, may be studied along at least two axes: who takes the

world-theater to be a divine place? Who does not? And: who says is there

is anything behind the actor’s masks? Who does not? About Lucian and

Peregrinus, Desmond writes:

Peregrinus was rightly named Proteus because he was as adaptable and

many-masked as the Old Man of the Sea. He took many shapes and professed

not to be changed by any. Lucian scoffs, but Peregrinus’ own intention

in his last “role” as a latter-day Hercules may have been to demonstrate

that external flames and a melting body cannot harm “the god within.”

(182)

That would be the case for saying that there is someone behind the mask.

Something like Lucian’s laughter would be the case for saying that there

is not, or that what is behind the mask is another mask, or that it does

not really matter… Now we might have begun to understand what is vital

in the couple behavior/anecdote. It it is a tension, an intimate

challenge, a kind of existential dare, that can only be resolved or

transformed in one’s own life and body.

3

I have mentioned the list of titles in the series: Stoicism,

Epicureanism, Neoplatonism, Ancient Scepticism … Cynics. When I gazed

upon the gathered books I felt I was not merely looking at a list of

didactic books aimed at a curious and intelligent student. I also felt

that I had before me a series of manuals, or at least fragments of

manuals concerning ways of life that are perhaps still available.

(Notice that someone claiming that the Cynic way of life is no longer

available could be accused of taking a cynical position). Grasped as

manuals they suggest a different sort of curiosity, and perhaps another

aspect of intelligence as well. I have advocated for a pragmatic use of

certain anthropology books along the same lines, as manuals concerning

the organization and disorganization of social and cultural life,

available to all. This sort of reading is obviously also in some sense a

willful misappropriation, or at least a misreading; something else than

the conventional use of such texts. It has two facets: the patience of

engagement with the text (one cannot simply call it plagiarism or

‘stealing ideas’); the impatience, or maybe hurried patience, concerning

whatever in it is significant enough to draw into one’s life as an

urgent problem, challenge, or question …

That said, I would like to consider that the Cynic way of life is

impossible. Maybe no one could embody their way of life perfectly,

avoiding the ambiguities brought about by the public aspect of the

example or the harangue. Or at least, if someone did, it was in a way

that was inimitable and so incommunicable. Historically speaking, such

perfect Cynics must have disappeared. I recall the first day I spoke in

public of the Cynics. One of my strange teachers was present; he said

something like: “What about the Cynics who were such perfect masters

that they disappeared?” At the time, I did not know how to respond.

Perhaps I was confused. I now find his question calming, in two perhaps

contradictory ways. First, if we suppose that the real Cynics

disappeared, we can be untroubled about finding real Cynics; we can

assume that we never will. The use of the question “Who is a Cynic?” is

modified accordingly: we will expect to find masks, semblances,

references. Imperfect embodiment is still embodiment, and literature is

still (is very much so!) life.

Secondly, however, one can certainly disappear to the historical record

without disappearing from the historical record. One’s life can just as

much be expressed in an anecdote as hidden within it. (Or both, which is

what I suppose Nietzsche meant: the best anecdotes reveal and conceal at

once. Otherwise we are collecting bad gossip, trivia, distractions,

typhos). This idea of disappearing (of secrecy, or of clandestinity)

could be used to finally dispose of the seriousness behind the question

“Who is the real Cynic?”, dissolving the distinction between “hard” and

“soft” Cynics: the first might have written all manner of things, an

exquisite and singular literature which they destroyed or shared with a

very few; the latter might have undertaken countless ascetic exercises,

from the ridiculous to the grotesque, but opted not to record them and

disallowed others from reporting on them. All of this is intimately

related to the problem of vanity at stake between Lucian and his

character Peregrinus; it also shows much of what is at stake in the

difference between ancient or medieval ways of life and our so-called

lifestyles.

4

I conclude by discussing the interesting references to anarchist ideas

in Cynics. This has great interest for me and mine. One of my

companions, when I showed him, patted me on the back and said something

like: “See, now our movements are points of reference for everything,

even for a book on ancient philosophy!” At which point I cringed twice,

once for the phrase “our movements” and again for the pat on the back,

that little victorious sentiment … I do not think that is exactly what

is interesting here. That Desmond makes the reference is indeed

noteworthy, especially given the clearly pedagogical intent of his

book.[13] But at the same time, that is not a reason for us to be

comforted; rather, it is a matter of curiosity, a reason to think

differently about who we suppose we are and what we suppose we are

doing. I mean that we could provisionally accept the connection he

makes, taking everything he writes about the Cynics as an intimate

challenge.

When he calls the Cynics anarchists, Desmond confesses this is just “the

most convenient label” for them. Of course:

… they renounced the authority of officialdom and of social tradition:

not marrying; not claiming citizenship in their native or adopted

cities; not holding political office; not voting in the assembly or

courts; not exercising in the gymnasium or marching with the city

militia; and not respecting political leaders … To be free is to have no

master, whether that master be a god, political assembly, magistrate,

general, or spouse. (185)

But Desmond thinks, as many or most do, of anarchism as a form of

politics, and so restricts the Cynic-anarchist connection to the

rejection of certain forms of political organization. On this side of

the question, he generalizes to the point of grotesque error: it is not

true that, as he seems to think, all anarchists think humans are

fundamentally good, or that life without the state is better because it

is more natural than life under it. On the other hand, calling Cynics

anarchists is compelling in that they did not form parties or foment

revolutions. So it is precisely to those anarchists most suspicious of

such activities that this comparison will be interesting.

For me, the import of this is to show the tense relation, or

non-relation, between the Cynics’ concern with ethics (a way of life)

above all, and the various political stages of the world, with all of

their typhos. One could anachronistically call them a subculture; this

would be useful precisely to the degree that it allows us to focus on

how they both maintained a way of life and did not entirely disappear in

the doing. That is: it is arguably the public aspect of their way of

life that brought them to these various platforms.

Desmond does not call the Cynics anarchists and leave it at that; he

also suggests that the same Cynics could be called democrats, kings, or

cosmopolitans. Indeed, for what does “carefree living in the present”

especially have to do with the State or its rejection? Instead of

asking: “what is Cynic politics?”, we can ask: “who is the Cynic when

she does this, when he says that …?” Let us say provisionally that the

Cynics were playing with, playing at politics, insofar as its cloudy

stages are also so many platforms from which to launch the perhaps

inevitable diatribe. They were democrats, because in so doing they

discovered a way of simultaneously inhabiting and resisting their

dominant political environment, pushing it in a radically egalitarian or

at least populist direction (Desmond reminds us that for many

“democracy” essentially meant “rule by the poor”(188).) But the

democratic assembly is also a place to practice comic wit! And the

funniest thing is to call oneself a king. Well, why not? It is much

funnier than calling oneself an anarchist or a democrat! Cynics are

kings in rags (57).[14] As with democracy, Desmond suggests that what we

have here is an intelligent exaggeration, a pushing to the limit, of

another ancient commonplace: that the best should rule.

The poor Cynic can claim to be a “king” because in his wild,

unconventional life he has recovered all the natural virtues: courage,

temperance, simplicity, freedom, and, most of all, philanthropia. As

“kings” who try to lead people to a life “according to nature,” they are

acting only in the people’s best interest. They alone love mankind, and

so in comparison with them, Sardanapallus, Xerxes, Philip, Alexander,

Antigonus, Seleucus, Ptolemy, Nero, Vespasian, Domitian and the rest are

only gangsters. (199)

They are, or aspire to be, monarchs in the only non-deluded sense of the

word. And cosmopolitans? It seems that at least some of them did use

this term. And here again we have what seems to be a provocation. Since

the polis was the only available sense of “state,” to claim to be a

citizen of the cosmos is to express oneself through paradox. “How can

one be a citizen of the totality and its vast spaces? Can one make the

cosmos one’s home? … Diogenes implies that only the Cynic wanderer is

truly at home anywhere” (205). I conclude that this mixture of

paradoxical and provocative attitudes is more interesting than opting

for any one Cynic politics.

Keeping this in mind, what happens when we return to the initial

connection and make it operate in the other direction, asking: are

anarchists Cynics? Could anarchists (really) be Cynics?[15] As with

other practices or ideas that interest me, for example those of the

Situationists and Nihilists (there might even be people clever enough to

play this game with the word “communist”!), I feel the need to keep

asking the question “who is …?” which is, among other things, the

perspectival question of the true and false.[16] This is not a matter of

identity or identification, of clarifying or purifying our essence. It

means, among other things, asking if there are anarchists who, instead

of considering their activities solely as a politics (”anarchism”),

understand what they do as aspects of a way of life distributed unevenly

between political activities in the ordinary sense, micropolitical

activities, and anti- or non-political activities — even inactivities?

Are there anarchists who experience their lives as the ultimate

criterion, instead of some goal or cause? If so, they will find plenty

of interest in a manual entitled Cynics.

Yes, someone could read this book as a manual; someone could begin a

revaluation of anarchist activities stimulated by the example of the

Cynics. In that direction, I conclude with an outline of topics for

immediate discussion and implementation:

What is typhos to you? I think of this as a promising alternative to

terms such as “ideology” or “spectacle.” Rather than deploying a a

true-false, reality-appearance dichotomy (the starting point of so many

boring conversations), to me typhos suggests an intimate, personal,

singular limit. It is the limit of my interest in the world, in the

ideas and experiences of others, and in some of my own ideas and

experiences as well. “Beyond this limit,” I can make a habit of

thinking, “all is smoke, vapor, typhos.” Ah, the destestable convergence

of the uninteresting and the confusing …

What are your forms of ascetic exercises, your ponoi? I know many

people who have shaved half of their head, some who are dirty enough to

be said to have caked mud on themselves, a few who have masturbated in

public … what kinds of situations can you get yourselves into that

exemplify, not in principle but in fact, detachment from what you wish

to detach yourself from? Instead of contending with others about

interpretations of the world, you could bend your urge to compete in the

direction of increasingly absurd or confrontational public acts. It is

stimulating to imagine how, violating before me a custom concerning

sexuality, you could provoke me to go and violate one concerning diet or

work.

In thinking through the first topic and living out the second, who can

truly describe themselves as “laughing a lot and taking nothing

seriously?” (65)[17]

Works Cited or Referenced

Chrysostom, Dio. Discourses. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932.

Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1985.

Desmond, William. Cynics. Berkeley: University of California Press,

2008.

Hadot, Pierre. What is Ancient Philosophy? Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 2004.

Laertius, Diogenes. Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers, vol.

II. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925.

Lucian. Selected Dialogues. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Nieztsche, Friedrich. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks.

Chicago: Regnery, 1962.

—. Human, All Too Human. New York: Penguin, 1994.

Serres, Michel. Detachment. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989.

Footnotes

[10]Lucian, 75.

[1] Cynics, 65. All further references in the essay.

[2] An account of this simplification as a de-culturing, perhaps

de-civilizing process, perhaps more palatable to some, can be found in

Nietzsche: “The Cynic knows the connection between the more highly

cultivated man’s stronger and more numerous pains, and his profuse

needs; therefore he understands that manifold opinions about beauty,

propriety, seemliness, and delight must give rise to very rich sources

of pleasure, but also to sources of discontent. In accordance with this

insight, the Cynic educates himself retrogressively by giving up many of

these opinions and withdrawing from the demands of culture. In that way,

he achieves a feeling of freedom and of strengthening …” Human, All Too

Human § 275.

[3] Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers, VI. 103.

[4] Anti-Oedipus, 225.

[5] Question: does awareness matter in all this? Those who become aware

of ambient cynicism and how it has affected or shaped their social

personas: could they be on the way to becoming Cynics? It cannot be so

simple. Deleuze and Guattari’s reference to “a strange piety” invites us

to consider contemporary cynicism as the cynicism of the credulous. I do

not have much of a taste for discussing capitalism as such, but it would

be interesting to consider modern cynics in Deleuze and Guattari’s sense

as those descended, though not without a series of sociocultural

mutations, from those Hume called the superstitious. Precisely with this

difference: modern cynics are superstitious, and they know it, and they

are resigned to it.

[6] Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, 25.

[7] What is Ancient Philosophy?, 108. The Cynic faces the crowd and

“scold[s] to his heart’s content,” as Nietzsche puts it (Human, All Too

Human, § 275.)

[8] The last sentence is cited from Diogenes Laertius, Lives and

Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers, VI.

[9] Lucian, “The Death of Peregrinus,” in Selected Dialogues, 74.

[10] A fascinating discussion of these sorts of reversals, based on a

famous anecdote involving Diogenes the Cynic and Alexander the Great,

appears in Part 4, “Friar,” of Michel Serres’ Detachment.

[11] European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 138.

[12] This is one of the few places where Desmond seems to go too fast,

overstepping his doxographical task. I find no correlate in the texts he

discusses to any such substantial concept of the self, which I take to

be a more recent invention. The same problem occurs in the definition of

typhos that I cited above: “…insubstantial ‘smoke’ in relation to the

self and its present experiences, which alone can be known and

possessed.” For me the highly abstract concept of the self is more

likely to be another example of typhos.

[13] His reference in making this connection ultimately seems to be

Kropotkin’s Britannica article of 1911 on “Anarchism,” in which Zeno of

Citium is given as an early inspiration. Zeno, founder of the Stoic

school, was a student of Crates the Cynic. (It would be tremendously

satisfying to discover a story about the two involving farts or

something comparable, to embarrass the seekers of noble origins.)

[14] As Dio Chrysostom put it, alluding to the figure of Odysseus. In

his “Fourth Discourse on Kingship,” Dio imagines a version of the

anecdotal dialogue between Diogenes the Cynic and Alexander the Great in

which he prepares the idea of “kings in rags” by undermining the

conventional understanding of monarchy. “And Alexander said: ‘Apparently

you do not hold even the Great King to be a king, do you?’ And Diogenes

with a smile replied, ‘No more, Alexander, than I do my little finger.’

‘But shall I not be a great king,’ Alexander asked, ‘when once I have

overthrown him?’ ‘Yes, but not for that reason,’ replied Diogenes; ‘for

not even when boys play the game to which the boys themselves give the

name ‘kings’ is the winner really a king. The boys, anyhow, know that

the winner who has the title of ‘king’ is only the son of a shoemaker or

a carpenter — and he ought to be learning his father’s trade, but he has

played truant and is now playing with the other boys, and he fancies

that now of all times he is engaged in a serious business — and

sometimes the ‘king’ is even a slave who has deserted his master. Now

perhaps you kings are also doing something like that: each of you has

playmates …” (46-48)

[15] There are multiple ways to understand this question. It might be

interesting to compare it, and its possible answers, with a topic of

scholarly controversy discussed by Desmond: was Jesus a Cynic? (Cynics,

211-216). Naturally, the mere question would disturb the average

Christian: if Jesus was a Cynic, then the entirety of the Christian

religion is an colossal misunderstanding at best, a vile imposture at

worst. Does the correlation of Cynics and anarchists similarly unground

“anarchism”?

[16] The parallels are obvious: there are vague epithets, a noun and an

adjective, for cynics and anarchists alike; there are Cynics and

anarchists, and there may or may not be Cynicism or Anarchism, depending

on who you ask. But “who is …” is also the question of possible and

impossible positions: “Who can be a Cynic?” So, for example, in the

aphorism cited above, Nietzsche writes that the gentle Epicureans had

the same perspective as the Cynics: “between the two there is usually

only a difference in temperament.”

[17] The quote is from Lucian.