Cynical Lessons

Alejandro de Acosta

2011, July
Contents
1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Works Cited or Referenced . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Footnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2
 “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 empha-
sized 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-

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.

3
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 reserv-
ing 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 com-
municated. 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
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.)

4
 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, insight-
ful, 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 imag-
ine 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 rel-
evant 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 (Dio-
genes, 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 designa-
tion to anonymous epithet.
One example of the richness of this question’s persistence in the literary transmission of Cyn-
icism 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

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.

5
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 Peregri-
nus 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, prac-
tices 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. Eventu-
ally 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, Peregri-
nus 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 late-
comers, 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
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.

6
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,
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.

7
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 serious-
ness 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 litera-
ture 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 disal-
lowed 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.

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.)

8
 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

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)

9
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 “accord-
ing 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, Alexan-
der, 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 cosmopoli-
tans? 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 Cyn-
ics?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 “commu-
nist”!), 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:

1. What is typhos to you? I think of this as a promising alternative to terms such as “ide-
ology” 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,
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.”

10
 personal, singular limit. It is the limit of my interest in the world, in the ideas and experi-
ences 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 …

2. 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.

3. In thinking through the first topic and living out the second, who can truly describe them-
selves 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.

17
The quote is from Lucian.

11
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Cynical Lessons
2011, July

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