The Ancient Cynics, Transcript

(00:01) tonight we're going to talk about the ancient cynics so a school of hellenistic philosophy ancient greek philosophy and hellenistic philosophy in the greco-roman world we use even at the beginning of our meetup we use this wonderful painting at the vatican by raphael it's called the school of athens and he's assembled essentially the idea of all of the ancient philosophers but actually also medieval philosophers that led down to the renaissance and we can identify some of the people although some of the some of these identifications are are

(00:37) speculative a lot of them are but um always at the beginning in the middle of them are plato and aristotle and over here socrates but socrates is talking to a couple people including antisthenes and that's going to be one of the people we're talking about tonight we have a bunch of other people we've talked about guevaries and pythagoras and boethius prime entities people we've talked about in other lectures and we'll talk about again hypatia but then right here diogenes actually i'm not supposed to do that i remember now i have this pointer now so

(01:10) i can do this i don't have to do in front of the screen so the people online can see so diogenes diogenes and antisthenes are two of the people we're gonna talk about today okay so this is part of a series we've been doing as we've been kind of trying to get through both the pre-socratics and what sort of the first beginnings of western philosophy were then socrates socrates immediate students and then the schools the classic schools of hellenistic philosophy that evolved from there so um among uh the people other than

(01:49) socrates the pre-socratics that are around our democritus who's famous for essentially not um subscribing to the this elemental earth fire water kind of theory but instead having a classical theory of atomism that everything is made up of atoms which is much closer to the what the modern understanding of it is um and from him and from that kind of philosophy uh evolved and with some help from this path epicureanism which we've looked at before which is this idea of this whole path here actually is this idea of the of hedonism or

(02:28) the idea that sensual pleasures or physical pleasures is actually how you live the good life with plato who's the direct student of socrates and plato's student aristotle who had the two different main lines of western uh philosophy platonism and aristotelianism plato was also influenced by pythagoras who's famous for the pythagorean theorem but is also has a mystical kind of philosophy and then this one that we're going to follow today so antisthenes who is a student of socrates his student diogenes his student crates and that so on down

(03:06) the cynic line that also gives birth to sources and we've had a lecture on the stoics before this was the most popular philosophy in the later roman empire and then skepticism is another related anyway not not directly from socrates but emerging at this time we'll have a lot of ability to go through all of that but one of the things that when especially when we're going to talk about cynicism and the cynics we have to dispel kind of what our modern english language has to say about some of these these words so um many of

(03:41) these ancient schools have vestiges or their where the words exist in english today but the words as they exist today in english don't mean what they meant or don't uh work with what the philosophers meant at the time right so as we go kind of through these so socratic that has kind of that is kind of you know still pretty much what what we should mean take it to mean so sometimes people will talk about the socratic method and so that's using dialogue to stimulate critical thinking by drawing out ideas and assumptions and

(04:17) that is based on what socrates is known for doing going around athens asking people difficult questions maybe questions that made them feel uncomfortable or they would they at least felt uncomfortable after they gave an answer and then socrates challenged their assumptions and so they would add he would ask well what is uh what is a virtuous life what is friendship and they would suggest give out some kind of a definition and then he would go through what are the logical consequences of this uh definition that they think it it's so easy to answer and

(04:52) then it would turn out that either there's a self-contradiction or or the logical consequences of their assertion is going actually quite the opposite of what they intended so socratic platonic bladonic has been reduced to just a couple places where we use it we especially talk about platonic friends which is means you know friends i guess friends without benefits right and so and we also talk occasionally about platonic solids although we don't use it very much if you um play dungeons and dragons all the dice are platonic solids right so you have

(05:30) all of these kind of instead if you're gonna roll a die 20 and a di12 in other words all of the different things like a like a pyramid a three-star four-sided pyramid anyway and uh a cube you know the famous ones but dodecahedron all these other solids um so these are from plato that's no problem so uh plato was very interested in those those solids and he is interested in in friendship and he also is interested in ideas as opposed to sensual carnal things but platonism is a lot more than what we use the words for in english today

(06:07) epicurean is one that's kind of really gone far astray and so epicurean now if you're an epicurean um you're that you're a gourmet right and so you are able to you're not only you're not only eating gourmet meals but you're very knowledgeable about it and enjoying it yeah foodie but um a fancy foodie so um and this is in in fact i think um although epicurus as we were talked about it is that path um where we talked about sensual pleasure is equated to good nevertheless um it was didn't mean that epicurus was all about having um you know being a glutton

(06:51) or something like that having big banquets all the time or just giving himself over to sensual pleasures uh because he's also has kind of a little bit longer term perspective about you know minimizing minimizing pain so if you for example were constantly just glutting yourself uh eating and drinking and be merry then the next morning you do find out that you have hangovers or you get diabetes or whatever it's going to be and and so epicurus is against that because paintings are trying to avoid as well right so it's not quite what it means

(07:20) stoic is one that kind of works so we mentioned that the stoics had become pretty much the most popular philosophy pop philosophy of the later roman empire and so the idea we have in english is that this is like if you're being stoic you're enduring pain or hardship or a loss without you know without letting it get to you emotionally you're like a rock you know and nobody's it's not bothering you you're not complaining or or having a breakdown or emotional this is um in part what the stoics were about and so the stoics um have precepts that

(07:54) are sort of like things like um you know a prisoner if you're in some prison you could be a king in you know as far in your in terms of effect if you just have that kind of expectation about what um life is supposed to be like and you just think of yourself as a king and you're just enjoying all of what the life that's circumscribed within the prison is whereas if you're a king you could be you know suffering horribly if you just start thinking about how stressful and awful it is and how everybody's constantly trying to assassinate you or

(08:26) any number of things so it depends on how you are um uh envisioning what you're at and how you are accepting um that certain things are outside of your control and are are recalibrating yourself what things that are in your control and so that's kind of the stoics and so that kind of is what it means but the cynics is quite different from what it means so today when we say someone's a cynic or we accuse them of cynicism it generally means that the person's jaded it means that they are especially i think badly

(08:58) of fellow human beings and so they'll think more or less nobody has um they they they doubt anyway that anybody has virtuous motives right and so they're quite cynical about their fellow human beings yeah so what i'd say is that that's gotten to us based on some of the negative components of the philosophy and it really is actually unhelpful for understanding the actual ancient cynics whereas stoics became the most popular and most admired philosophy by the end of the roman empire cynics were quite looked down upon in the

(09:36) antiquity unless you were a really good or true cynic but there were unfortunately as far as most everybody was concerned lots of wannabe cynics hanging around and so it's these cynics that have given the whole word a bad name and so we'll see that in the course of this lecture so all right so a lot of those as we saw all that tree is kind of branching back to socrates as he's wandering around asking various questions but at the heart of it is often how do you live a virtuous life what's the good life what is true happiness how are you

(10:10) um uh how are you what's almost there for what's life's meaning in terms of how should you be in order to have a meaningful life but as though although he wandered around and asked people questions like that it turns out that his students that he had all around him came away with quite quite different answers so they answered these in very different ways and so if we just zoom in on that chart that we had before and we start with socrates asking questions like what's a virtuous life well one of his students aristippus of cyrene did this just

(10:47) freeze no his idea here is again seek seek sensual pleasure physical pleasure and avoid avoid pain right and so that goes down that hedonist path to epicurus that kind of an idea where we are really focusing on this kind of material feeling that we have that is quite the opposite of what you know his contemporary plato who was another direct student of socrates plato has this very different view that all of this the material world the physical world is really quite inconsequential compared to the ideal world the world of ideas and

(11:30) so when we are looking for the good life or the virtuous life we have to approach first true virtue which is not material at all it's rather an eternal idea and in fact anything that we're experiencing in this life or this world is a mere shadow compared to the true reality of ideas and so plato has quite a different view from his fellow student of socrates aerostippus but if we go over here to this other fellow student antisthanes antisthanes also doesn't agree with aristippus but he also does not agree with plato at all so

(12:09) oh i'm sorry i didn't i didn't know what the next slide was we'll go back get to that first there's a there's aristotle who is plato student i just mentioned um he's he's kind of going along with plato he agrees that there is this idea of virtue that we're trying to achieve but he is less less in agreement that the whole physical world um is is just a shadow and isn't important he thinks actually no if we study nature we're going to see all sorts of ways that the fingerprints of this this ideal of good is embedded

(12:41) in that and so therefore um there's all kinds of um value in the material world that we're living around and so it's a essentially a check it's aristotelian aristotelianism is kind of a check on platonism so now anyway having gone that way down the path then over here antisthenes who is again a fellow student of socrates does not agree with aristippus or plato so his view is actually um sensual pleasures actually need to be shunned uh because they're not not good as aerostipas would have it they're actually evil

(13:17) and in fact in order to achieve virtue you have to deny your body these kind of comforts uh because though they would be leading you to the opposite of the good life the opposite of virtue and so then from antisthenes we're going to develop the full uh cynicism under diogenes and diogenes is going to take this further by saying um you know so all of these comforts that you guys have felt that you are so important to you you're all here you you're all you know wearing nice clothes and shoes and you have watches and cell phones and presumably

(13:53) when you go home you have a home that's all craziness you know as far as that's you don't need any of those things as far as diogenes is concerned we'll see because again you'd be you're a true uh philosopher the virtuous man is self-sufficient the virtuous person is self-sufficient of him her or himself so that's where we're getting to full cynicism and we'll go down then from that his other students but the path then goes not directly to zeno but zeno then is where having had a cynic teacher he develops the philosophy

(14:31) of stoicism which is again that thing that i talked about of if you're a prisoner making yourself a king or king not being a prisoner so stoically accept what's not in your power to change so how can you do all those things so those are really just thumbnails as much as you a philosophy if you can draw it into a dot you're obviously not giving it you know it's complete um subtleties or anything like that but i'm just trying to give us a little bit of a map so that we can kind of see how the different branches branch out those

(14:58) clear are there questions okay okay so antisthenes so this is that student of socrates what i'm saying is the first cynic or possibly the proto-cynic he has his own philosophy that his his students develop into cynicism later so like plato and aristippus he's a student of socrates they are all seeking the answer to this question that socrates kept asking what constitutes a life well lived so like plato antisthanes wrote his philosophy in the form of numerous dialogues so the idea of it is unlike like a later philosopher like aristotle who

(15:38) would simply write logical arguments and give you answers and say this is what this is and this is what that is and this is how many teeth horses have and this is how motion works why when you throw something up in the air it falls back down even before the theory of gravity in other words he's explaining everything that's what aristotle liked to do plato rather and also antisthenes instead wrote dialogues where the philosopher is asking questions about people around the same way socrates did in real life and the

(16:10) people around who are characters in the dialogues give different answers and together they enter a conversation or dialogue of ideas which then gets the readers us to engage our minds and be part of that conversation so that we ourselves are are coming up with the answers or we ourselves are getting new understanding through reading the dialogue um and so plato has a bazillion of these and we have gone through several of them we did want at least the republic we had a lecture on well maybe a year ago um mars the spring

(16:42) but unlike plato all of antisthenes dialogues have been lost so we've talked many times about how how rare and difficult it is for texts from the ancient world to have survived and made it to us so if you happen to be lucky and somebody rolled the scrolls up and put him in a jar walked out into the desert in egypt or in syria palestine israel and buried it somewhere in a cave then it may well survive and and and it'll be here to us otherwise if not that you have to have it be um copied so essentially it has to be something that

(17:20) somebody for the last 2 500 years has wanted to or at least you know the last 500 has been okay if it made it too that long but um essentially in that time period somebody had to have wanted it and so pretty well that means in the west it it means generally speaking christian monks had to want it right and so at a certain point christian monks are still have um and are very interested in um they actually had to get aristotle and plato from the from the greeks and the and the arabs but anyway they wanted a bunch of things like

(17:53) cicero that got saved in liby um but uh they didn't want antisthenes or nobody's one of him enough to save him so sadly we'd only have fragments where people have quoted him in later compilations okay so that way we can only kind of just piece together what he was actually teaching but so one of the things that he definitely did though antisthenes here this first cynic or the the um the precursor to the cynics he definitely rejects platonism so i mentioned here that plato um all of these virtues are ideas or forms

(18:29) um they are things like goodness for goodness sake or goodness itself or uh any other kind of thing beauty as a concept as a form he said that those are those ideas are the same thing as uh as something like two one plus one is two which is to say it's a mathematical reality like a sphere like a platonic solid that doesn't it doesn't matter um about a sphere that is trying to exist in this imperfect material world there is the concept of sphere and sphericity uh that doesn't exist in the material world but it exists in this world of

(19:05) ideas and that is the most important place for it to be and that is also then true for good the good uh anticipates however he says wait a second so i i've seen a bunch of horses i can see a horse right here but i have never seen horse etude you know i don't know hoarseness you know so there may well be plato the argument that people say is there's a um that every one of the chairs that you're sitting in is a material imperfect form expression of chairness but there is uh it is just a shadow of what a chair you know the idea of an

(19:42) idealized chair which can't exist in in in material form because it would be imperfect in the existence of it and so chairness itself as an idea is an eternal idea that is perfect um and and tistonius is like what is i've never seen chairness so he is um on the one hand in that sense of asserting a kind of empiricism which is to say he needs to have uh sensory evidence for this kind of claim but it's also he's also a kind of an early nominalist which is to say he's saying things like chair is not a it's not an internal

(20:18) concept it's just a word and so it's a word that we use to describe something that people have hammered together and you sit on but that isn't an eternal concept right so that's anticities counter argument so uh nevertheless like plato anticipates as i mentioned rejects this idea that goodness can simply be uh equated with physical pleasure or or a lack of pain so he agrees with plato and socrates different arguments that you can take pleasure in all sorts of bad things that we might do there may well be people who are

(20:57) sadistic who take pleasure in hurting others and most people agree that that despite the fact that they are getting pleasure sensual pleasure that that isn't actually good behavior and so certainly plato and anticipates are on that side of the argument here so he rejects then this idea of hedonism so socrates held that a wide pers i'm sorry a wise person has to avoid becoming a slave to his or her her passions right and so you may well um have something that you just really like doing um but if you aren't don't aren't um

(21:38) having practicing some kind of moderation having some kind of moderating effect on it that could spiral out of control uh fairly quickly and that will not lead to you know living a good life and so um uh aristippus this is the opposite side now these guys have these greek names so i'm i'm sorry that one guy is named anticipates and the other one's named aristippus and uh and and these are not necessarily familiar names for us but anyway aristippus has done that on that hedonism path right and so he's socrates student and he his he's saying okay i

(22:12) agree um i don't want to be a slave to my passions or desires and i'm not gonna be because i'm going to maximize all of them and i'm gonna get the maximum pleasure out of it so uh you know he therefore really did decide i'm gonna be drunk all the time and i'm gonna you know you know do that big banquet and all that kind of thing that i said that uh epicurus didn't do right so antis though has the exact opposite conclusion so he says that happiness is found not by satisfying physical desires but by denying them and thereby eliminating

(22:44) those desires so if you can um if you can be an ascetic if you can deny your body all of these sensual things that it wants to do then the desire will ultimately be deadened and gone away and then you won't be a slave to those desires because you will have you will be in a much more spiritual state let's say because you've denied the physicality that's anyway antisthenes idea so um here's the next you know at the extreme so he's quoted as saying that physical pain is actually a blessing so uh also he said that it's actually a

(23:22) blessing if you have go into ill repute so if everybody is if everybody around town says you know what an idiot you are you're what it you know or what a jerk that's a blessing because you um a hardship is good in antisthenes idea so satisfying sensual desire is a positive evil it's not simply you know not good it's actually bad so and so he actually is quoted as saying i would rather you know be insane i'd rather go mad than to feel pleasure so that's taking it the argument to the extreme so he built on this uh indifference that socrates

(24:05) frequently um you know lived out he when socrates was talking about things he wasn't ever really worried about becoming wealthy or anything like that he wasn't worried about creature comforts he felt all those kind of things were arbitrary um but you know socrates might have been doing all that kind of thing because he just didn't care about it and he was kind of one of these absent-minded guys and on this sort of thing this is taking it to building on that and building a little bit more so um socrates had taught that essentially

(24:38) nothing um nothing could harm a good man so because goodness is its own reward and so this is why even up until the end um socrates for him in his own understanding isn't harmed even though the athenians order that he has to be executed for on the what he felt was the false charge or trumped up charge of corrupting the youth uh of athens with his um philosophical ideas and so uh and so because he said essentially that you know goodness is its own reward he at the end of the day you can't take away the fact that he was good

(25:20) and so in committing suicide that he still died and for him a good and honorable death and he continued to be good throughout his entire life and died as a martyr too good um and so if that didn't he didn't lose as opposed to if he let's say we're a bad person where um no matter what you do you're still a bad person so you that you so in other words evil is its own punishment and good is his own reward for socrates antisthanes though then concludes that so long as one is good then truly good so one is you're a philosopher who is doing that

(25:52) sort of socratic and you have that kind of socratic will so that you're always being good then nothing else is going to matter so all of the rest of all of these concerns like whether again you own anything or whether you're feeling pain or whether everybody hates you and you have a terrible reputation doesn't matter because a good philosopher the good person is completely self-sufficient in and of themselves in this kind of logical conclusion or maybe taking it to an illogical extreme of antitheticity so he goes beyond socrates so socrates

(26:28) as we mentioned had this habit of questioning conventional ideas and so he goes around and asks why why are you worried about death or why why do you think that it's okay to um cheat for your on behalf of your friends or give your friends something like that anticipates takes this further by rejecting uh though social convention altogether and in fact maybe pursuing unconventionality uh you know as an end to itself so maybe we're saying that if just because things have been um inherited as a tradition so this is a

(27:03) custom that everybody in athens has he more or less thinks well customs are are pointless and so if you're going to do something that's completely uncustomary or unconventional that actually may be a preferable to anything that is an inherited custom the goal is to always he to separate out essentially arbitrary inherited custom from natural law what would it be natural for a person to do but the question always is what is natural for people to do and that isn't ever particularly easy to define okay so um so essentially anticipates then he's

(27:45) pursuing unconventionality for his own sake he becomes sort of an eccentric as a result of that doing various things that are unconventional one of the things that he does is he establishes his own school and that school is at the kind of sergei's gymnasium which is the third there's a bunch of different gymnasia in athens and this is the third most important one but anyway it becomes then one of several key locations in what becomes kind of like the philosophical geography of athens and the geography itself is what gives us a

(28:19) lot of the names for these different schools so i showed you kind of before that chart of the school of the different schools of thought and we have had the painting but here's also how it works in the geography of athens and so um gymnasia are these traditional athletic centers in athens in ancient greek world where men are training for public athletic games and they're called gymnasium obviously which means nude place because adult men are training there and it's done in the nude right and so in terms of aristotle school

(28:53) he held his school at the gymnasium of apollo but apollo lyceus and hence uh his school is named after the place where it is it's at the apollo laissez school and so it's called the leicester and so lithium is still you know a word especially like in french for example for school but we sometimes use it so what is it so where is the lithium here so the lithium is here it's a place name i believe so i just uh mine i think it's a place name so here's the acropolis and so the market and then off to the one side

(29:29) outside the walls there's the lyceum right and so that's where aristotle's school is anticity school at the kind of sarge's is actually on this map it's actually behind this this is not the best picture so it's a it's around the corner and back here so it's on it's also outside the walls just barely but it's behind the acropolis here and so his place the gymnasium nobody they didn't know at the time in antiquity why it's called that but kind of sarcasm apparently means either the swift dog or the white dog and so anyway that's where that name

(29:59) comes from and this is one of the places where the cynics are getting their name from right so in the same way the lyceum is uh aristotle's school so so too uh antisthenes school here is named for dogs and this is where we're getting that cynic name plato uh meanwhile established a school in an olive grove that's named for an athenian hero academos and there are before that is called you know here it is the grove here and is therefore called the academy and so all of our words like academic academy and everything like that just

(30:34) come from that and it's just a guy's name it doesn't mean all the things back then anyway that it means to us now likewise epicurus right near the academy he bought a garden and so sometimes you hear the garden of epicurious epicurus uh and so anyway that's where that was and then finally the stoics so we think of stoic again as being this um you know we think of it as being like the philosophers which is that they're uh a rock they're inured to pain and and hardship and loss and emotion it's actually um uh the name here for the marketplace the

(31:10) stowa the particles that are on the side of the agaro which is market and so it's like more or less like saying the the cloister you know like the colonnade and so that's what the word initially means but you can kind of see then how uh because athens has become this center uh cultural center the center for philosophical thought that's then radiating out and having all of this effects throughout time from us but it all you know is is actually being played out in the actual geography of the city at the time classical athletes

(31:44) okay so why are the cynics called cynics um so it could be and it may well be just for that coincidence that we talked about of the uh the gymnasium that's called the gym of the of the fast dog or the white dog but already at the time period in classical times ancient people had different explanations for why cynics are called cynic which means dog-like in greek and so one of the commentators on aristotle's rhetoric in antiquity already wrote there are four reasons why the cynics are so named first because of the indifference of

(32:22) their way of life for they make a cult of indifference and like dogs they eat and make love in public they go barefoot they sleep in tubs and it crossroads so they have really done this thing about eschewing convention they're denying the body and all the other things that you need by just doing things like dogs living like dogs in public right the second reason is that like dog is that the dog is a shameless animal and they make a cult of shamelessness uh not as being beneath modesty but being superior to it so um they're completely

(32:55) immodest and they're doing not only unconventional things but things that are uh against all propriety as far as people in antiquity and frankly people now would feel uh and they did it not because they considered themselves to be beneath modesty but because they're they're above it they're in this condition that is beyond convention which they deny as being any having any value at all the third reason is that a dog is a good guard and they guard the tenants of their philosophy so they argue a lot so um you know darg

(33:27) if you try to come into the and the curious garden is going to bark you away or something like that like work and the and the these guys are very argumentative the fourth reason is that the dog is a discriminating animal which can distinguish between his friends and enemies so they recognize his friends those who are suited to philosophy and receive them kindly but those unfitted they drive away like dogs barking at them so essentially that's um the folk etymology of how a philosopher is describing why these guys are called

(34:00) dogs or dog-like guys even if the real answer may well be just because that's what the gymnasium was called to begin with but it influenced them later because they also you know took the name and and and ran with it and liked it so so living up to the name so the cynics after this first character who may well not have actually recognized antis who's this the uh this proto cynic the student of socrates um the different people who follow him his students and their students um develop this further beyond where he what he would have

(34:36) so the most famous here the most famous student the most famous cynic is diogenes of sinope and cinnape is a greek colony in what's not turkey anatolia on the black sea and he came to athens where he is said to and again they embraced this term dog right and so he's dogged at the heels of antisthenes and so he's following him around like a dog and uh and eventually after a long time uh is accepted as a student according to tradition anyway and becomes then antisony's faithful hound so according to the story um antisthenes has no interest in having

(35:15) students that's not what he wants and so he's beating him away with the stick and he and uh diogenes says you know as long as i don't care about what happens to my body with this stick being hit as long as i think that there's uh you know something in you that can teach me and it and and and you know essentially get me to this place of enlightenment so after after a whole bunch of abuse um he finally gets accepted we don't know uh in any of these kind of all of these stories are later and and traditional and so in in that sense

(35:47) because all of these texts are lost and we only have um our descriptions of these characters uh through later um compilations and stories we don't know if any of these are really historical or in even in fact whether diogenesis really is the student of antisthenes but the later compilers felt that he was and at least that that's how the tradition goes so antis as we saw before he had flouted convention but more as kind of an eccentric guy now diogenes has felt that his teacher maybe is not really fully living up to the

(36:24) teachings and so tistonis for example hadn't given away all his wealth or anything like that he's still living generally as a regular guy just an unconventional and eccentric guy diogenes however um did the opposite so he famously took to the picture of him living in a tub to show that his body has disdain for the elements he is able to live in a state of nature uh he doesn't need anything more than you know his tub his loincloth essentially his uh staff and his uh his baking pool so then uh so there's that rejection of physical

(37:04) property he's living then as a mendicant ascetic and so that's those are two fun words so mendicant means a guy who is deliberately living by begging and so we have for example a long traditions in east and west of mendicant uh monks and and so uh traditionally buddhist monks are going around and they're getting um from the community uh food from people by by being mendicants by begging likewise that would be what in the in the west uh like the franciscans and the dominicans initially especially franciscans are

(37:40) doing so begging um mendicant and then also ascetic and so the aesthetic is again this person who is denying the body comforts in order to show that you have this interior intellectual or spiritual power that supersedes uh the physical and so he famously then um diogenes i said had nothing but these clothes on his back and he had his begging bowl until then he saw a little boy drinking like this out of his hands and he's gonna drink without a begging bowl and so then diogenes took his bowl and smashed it and says

(38:19) fool that i am i've been carrying around superfluous baggage all this time so he was very upset with himself for him from running around with his baking bowl that's too much personal property it's not needed he could just do this you know okay so um he goes on to have this kind of total rejection of convention so socrates had made himself a nuisance to his fellow athenians by asking them all these questions uh that caused them to rethink their conventional ideas or cause them to just think that they didn't like socrates either way

(38:52) um anyway diogenes took this many steps further by flouting all sorts of conventional behavior so he would go eat he would live in the market there in his tub and he would eat in the market which is against you know the convention of the day but he also for example urinated on people who'd insulted him that's against convention in all days he defecated in the theater he masturbated in public this is still generally speaking against most society's conventions so it's not just you know what the distinct athenian custom right

(39:27) so when questioned about that last thing uh the extreme practice he reportedly said if only it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly so he has a physical desire or whatever that has nothing to do that isn't essential it's a it's simply a convention that we have that we don't do this thing and he is showing all the people uh through just turning everything upside down through being again not shameful but above shame is what the cynics are trying to say so all of these things are are beyond him so he also does all these different

(40:02) things part of his idea so socrates had said socrates didn't write anything because socrates didn't feel that philosophy was learned through this kind of writing so he wanted to have philosophy through dialogue through discussion his several his students as we saw in destinies and plato tried to record that by making the dialogues in written form but a lot of the idea here of the cynics is not it's not that they're not writing but that the philosophy has to be lived and acted out so you have to be doing all this stuff and so much of what uh

(40:39) cynicism then evolves into is what we might think of as like performance art um although you know it's not just art it is philosophy right performance philosophy and so one of the things that he did is he carries around a lit lamp quite famous in the marketplace in the full daylight and everyone's like what is he mad is he crazy what are you doing are you doing that what do you what are you what are you looking for and why are you doing and he says i'm just looking for an honest man so something that can't be found right and so he's

(41:07) trying to shame people and get people to think of different things including plato right so it doesn't get along with plato and vice versa so plato had apparently um as they are working on kind of their natural definitions of how to understand the world and they're trying to um logically define out let's say the animal categories and this sort of thing um and tonganshi said that humans are are bipeds which is to say two-legged animals that don't have feathers uh and so diogenes then went and plucked a chicken he brought it to the academy

(41:42) and he uh wanted to publicly mock uh plato here i brought you a man and according to the um the anecdote then the the the the platonist the academy um adds another characteristic to the definition so it's a biped without feathers that has nails so anyway the chicken doesn't lie then right so anyway so diogenes though has no respect for plato's abstract philosophy so this idea of the forums of ideals and plato in turn in doing all of this kind of walking around performance art he calls diogenes a socrates that has

(42:19) gone mad so he's doing the socratic stuff but in a way that's just nutso as far as plato's concerned so flouting all this kind of convention so one of the core conventions of antiquity um is this idea that you need to have a proper burial and that's really true across the greco-roman world the romans one of the few things that they actually like develop insurance for is so that you have essentially your local men's club and the club's rules are that you know you will help bury um you know the others when they when they're dying and things

(43:00) like that and same thing though and for greeks here burying your your your father is the definition when he dies or whatever is the definition of filial piety um you know this is why in the in the new testament in the gospels when um jesus asks how can he how can you um you know be a disciple and he and he says and he says well let me first you know follow me or whatever and and the guy who's gonna follow jesus he says well let me first bury my father and jesus says let the dead bury their own you know come follow me now right

(43:34) and so this is like completely also trouncing all of human convention uh at the time so likewise just like that when diogenes was asked as he's approaching death how does he want to be buried what does he want to have his as his last will and testament here in terms of wishes and all the people in the city are asking him that and he says i want to be just thrown outside the city wall so the wild animals can feast on my body and the guy people are like whoa oh okay but nobody wants that that's the thing that you where you desperately don't

(44:07) want wild animals eating you uh after you're dead and people ask well wouldn't you be just really upset and aghast at this horrible fate and he says no not at all all you have to do is provide me with a stick so i can beat all the creatures away and they're like what wait a second and so people wonder wait a second how can you use the stick after you're dead you won't have the use of your senses your faculties you're not able to use a stick as a dead person he's like if i lack awareness why should i care what happens to me

(44:35) when i'm dead you know so it's flouting then all of this convention to say that's not what matters okay very famous story that all ancient people like to retell and they tell it in multiple different ways whether or not any such thing ever happened it's hard to know but anyway we'll tell it anyway because it's fun so ancient commentators they like to tell the story of alexander the great going to meet diogenes this macedonian king asks so he's the person who has sway over all greece at this point and he asks uh as kings do um

(45:11) if you get this thing where king asked i'll you know i can do any favor for you what you know give me you're so famous as a philosopher anything that it's in my power up to half my kingdom i'll give it to you that kind of a thing when that happens in stories uh so he asks is there anything can he can give to this famous philosopher to diogenes and diogenes replies uh yes stand a little out of my son right so he has um he's stood next to him he's casting a shadow over diogenes and diogenes was enjoying uh the sun that's all he that's all he

(45:40) wants from alexander so struck by kind of the audacity of a reply like that because he doesn't he's ever self-sufficient in himself he doesn't need all of the things that are the power the things that a king has so political power reputation wealth none of that matters to the true philosopher he has the king says if i were not alexander you know i would want to be diogenes you'd give comanche has an idea or a comment wait one second we're gonna get the microphone uh the version i know uh is uh as you mentioned don't cast your

(46:18) shadow on me which is uh in accordance with the later one if i were not alexander i would wish to be diogenes which is not just enjoying the sun okay uh almost he is the sun and alexander is the shadow oh i see that's a good that's a i that was lost in the translation that i have i like that yeah okay so that's nice so anyway so he's the sun alexander's the shadow so if i weren't alexander i would want to be diogenes diogenes response if i wasn't a diageos i would be wishing to be diogenes too so you know so he's self-sufficient in himself very

(46:56) audacious right okay so um a third then um founder of cynicism is a guy named krates of thebes and he is renowned for essentially putting his money where his mouth is in terms of this philosophy so he became quite famous and uh developed reputation because when he became a pupil of diogenes uh he gave away just a huge fortune so that he would also be like diogenes completely without property but he didn't start from no property to begin with he started from being quite rich so he himself then in turn krates has a number of students and so he's

(47:36) also famous because uh zeno of kidium is one of his students right at the end of his life and there's a big overlap between um this kind of idealized cynicism and as it gets into stoicism and we've already had a lecture before on stoicism so we're not going to go uh into these kind of details but this is how again that that path is getting to the development of stoicism and then he has anothe other students that are a guy named metroplees of marinea and metrically's sister hipparchia of marinette they are living by begging and but they

(48:09) are also being very respected for it so what they um what they're showing what you know is again this um not needing not needing stuff the way all of us normally do uh and also not needing any kind of bodily comfort and so by showing this kind of like uh superpower ability that none of us want to do and also by providing kind of performance art entertainment kind of stuff there's whole crowds of people in the marketplace who um you know are prepared to give them whatever they need for that day and so and so that continues on that's

(48:49) not an uncommon thing so it's not just the cynics that are doing that um this is very likely i mean a couple hundred years later this is very likely also what um what the jesus movement is so this proto-christianity so jesus when he's talking about the prayer he says give us this day our daily bread uh and they have renounced property and they are going around as mendicants and they are just they're living by whatever you know because they're having a spiritual commune they're not doing all the things that everybody else is doing

(49:19) that the conventional stuff uh and so then they're asking for bread and they're getting it uh in that day and that continues on we'll see um like we said after the buddhist monks all the way down the monks in in the west as well so it is something that has previously been um something that was not always looked down upon although although in in general this is a um an intentional mendicant as opposed to beggars who are at the margins of society for other reasons that are also maybe or were looked down upon i mean some people are looking down

(49:56) on these guys too certainly plato was right so so he has these other students though so this is crates again so we're looking at this is a student of diogenes or at least traditionally understood to be one and so his students include these two brother and sister team and so um they also um hipaakia and her brother also come from a very rich family uh the family is just absolutely adamant that they do not want especially their daughter to become a pupil of krates and they do not want her to you know she can't this

(50:34) she's a girl she's a woman you she can't you know women shouldn't be cynics you know living and doing this all this stuff in the streets and so they're trying to even even her brother who wants to be acidic philosophers trying to get krates to dissuade her and so to show that you know if she you know she's attracted to and you know falling in love with um crates uh crates again that the scenic philosopher who gave away his big fortune is now living in the street with nothing so he takes his robe off and he says this is it this is all you know if

(51:04) you wanna if you're gonna be i'm gonna be your bridegroom this is crates and everything that he has there's nothing more here's the bridegroom and this is his property just his body but far from being dissuaded then hipparchia adopted his absolutely the same lifestyle and so then they began living together in the market in the tub and with only one piece of cloth between them and that kind of thing and a begging bowl kind of thing right so um crates then that relationship they have their marriage he called it

(51:33) uh canogamy which is to say dog coupling so they're they're not living in the kind of convention that um the rest of us are dealing with where we have formal legal marriage and all the ensuing customs and everything like that he's doing dog coupling uh canogavy so in keeping then with their disdain for convention hipparchia wore mail clothes uh and lived on equal terms in the marketplace with her husband and so that all by itself in the highly patriarchal and sexist society of ancient greece is really flouting or overturning

(52:09) convention right unfortunately again because we have very little of anybody's writings at all none of parkia's writings have survived but it's she is according to all of the different um commentators at the time uh was a respected cynic philosopher in her own right uh alongside then her husband crates and so there is she is the only i think uh woman in uh a different diogenes diogenesis of laertes um biographies of of the 72 prominent ancient greek philosophers and so uh so she was included in that and there's also a letter that's attributed to

(52:49) diogenes the cynic uh where he writes back to marinea this town that they're from and and is saying you know you're called marinea you're named after some wine merchant and it's and it's you know there's nothing there's no reason that you should be named that you really should name the tree name that your town you know hipparchia because you have had a top-notch philosopher come you know out of your town and that's what you should you know you should re-change the name of your town however there's no evidence they did

(53:23) so anyway so we don't have too many um ancient and medieval even female philosophers that we could turn to but we want to be able to highlight when we do so you know as we're kind of uh going through this whole thing and we have some takeaways and we have some sum up for what we've gone through today so the bad kind of stuff so um uh diogenes anyway was popular enough that when somebody broke his tub the athenians all chipped in and got him a new tub so they wanted they liked him doing that uh he was um the bane of a bunch of people's

(54:02) existence but a bunch of other people you know at least enjoyed it enough or either thought it was fun or edifying enough that they wanted they they liked him around um he was respected acrotes then his student was respected for giving up you know a fortune to follow his beliefs that's really showing that you um you really mean it right but unlike a guy who's starting out like that who's very serious about it and maybe has a very sophisticated thinking about it it's much easier for flocks of young imitators to simply grow

(54:33) their beards out pick up a staff pick up a begging bowl uh go live on the streets and start essentially begging and making a spectacle of yourself um in that in those kind of cases uh you may they may not do as good they may do something that's just as outrageous as what their um the people they're emulating but um it may not be i'd say have as deep of philosophical underpinnings you may not be living it seriously you may be just doing that for a summer gig anyway you can see that people um uh lots of people in the

(55:07) society um start to think well we have uh enjoyed and it has been a thing where we're prepared to um you know give to mendicants uh who are real baggers who really need it and that's the only way that they're surviving in a society that doesn't have a social safety net of any other kind and we were prepared to give to people to philosophers who were living you know a very noble life and demonstrating all this stuff but i don't know if we want to you know be feeding an entire uh colony of hippies in our in our in our

(55:40) marketplace right and so then what happened is then in the later roman empire that kind of troops of young cynics or cynics anyway were common enough being pop philosophers in the different towns but they became kind of a stock comic character and so in plays and parodies you could actually have kind of the philosopher who was the guy with the beard guy with the staff by the you know doing all this sort of um outrageous cynic behavior um and essentially giving cynics a bad name so lucian complained for example in the second

(56:16) century quote every city is filled with such upstarts particularly those who enter the name of diogenes and destinies and crates as their patrons and enlist in the army of the dog so there's an army of these guys that are wandering around and not being reputable as far as anyway some roman writers are concerned so this element we talked about before continues on so as with all of the different philosophical schools so as the roman empire christianizes the formal school of uh cynic philosophy ends but sort of right away immediately a lot of

(56:59) the practices of cynics are largely absorbed into christian monasticism and so already in the fifth and sixth century that kind of time there are wandering mendicants monks all across uh the eastern roman empire who were going around and we we've seen before in some of our lectures doing things like uh they're denying the body they're doing things like living on top of a big column and they're and they're showing their disdain for uh again the elements and convention and everything like that and their spiritual power uh the connection

(57:33) to god by being up there and and living up there including everything to deal with again defecation and and food as you have to kind of raise everything up on a basket the little bit tiny amounts of food and of course they are also trying to eat on just maybe they're only eating sacrament wafers or something like that to keep them alive so it's also a miracle how as far as people are concerned how little they're eating on right so it's the same kind of um anyway mendicate life that gets absorbed that the cynics are doing that gets

(58:03) absorbed then into the monastic life uh and we already mentioned or made a a parallel before there's a bunch of modern scholars who actually suggest that uh jesus himself may have been influenced anyway by the kind of cynics that are living in the he lives in the roman empire he lives in a hellenistic world there's a greek city that is you know one day's walk from nazareth and it's conceivable that one of these things that jesus is doing by going around telling people let the dead bury their own in other words

(58:40) eschewing those kind of conventions uh eliminating property and holding all things in common praying for daily bread this kind of thing saying um consider the lilies they toil not neither do they reap but your father is in heaven takes care of them this kind of thing that that in fact may well his original movement although obviously much changed when christianity becomes institutionalized may well have had this kind of cynic at least if not connection appearance of being just like what the cynics are doing but we can say as the thing resurfaces a

(59:14) bunch of different times when we get to the central middle ages even as one of the and one of the periods of the reform of western christian monasticism um out now the monks in in for example francis of assisi's day the benedictines are living in monasteries that have become massively rich and the monks are are no longer really living as ascetics anymore they're instead living as noble lords living in a in a monastery that has many peasants and slaves and servants and things like that to to take care of them and so francis of

(59:47) assisi seeing that same need for um uh demonstrating again an ascetic lifestyle and also um you know a more uh evident uh spiritual power that comes from renouncing wealth especially in renaissance sorry medieval towns merchant towns that are becoming increasingly money-driven um he again being the son of a rich merchant gives away all his property scatters that all to the poor he becomes a mendicant does things like talk to animals the same kind of public display stuff and he essentially founds them that franciscan order which at least

(1:00:26) initially is kind of doing these same kind of things that would be quite at home to the school of the cynics from the roman time period so takeaways you know on cynicism kind of the good points so i would say that one of the things that uh strikes me about cynics anyway personally as i've kind of gone through and looked at all the things they're doing there could be really good points to questioning inherited convention so that can lead us to plenty of insights whether for example particular conventions really matter or whether

(1:01:01) some rules even that we have inherited just because we've always done them that way they may well be unjust right and so for example you know one of those was why can't you eat in the marketplace you know um that wasn't one of the ones that was a controversial to the athenians but it hasn't been i had to explain it to you guys that it was against custom in order to for you to have an understanding that that would be you know um flouting custom i mean the the idea um for the athenians is if he would go to the gymnasium and and uh and study or

(1:01:35) train fully clothed that would be against custom to the athenians it would be pretty crazy for us for if people started just um well maybe maybe not not for everybody but anyway so some people uh would find it crazy if in all the gyms here all the good lives everybody was suddenly to be naked while they're doing all the working out that would be against our customs so some of these customs um are completely particular to the different place and therefore are arbitrary um you know and one of those so for example would be things like should

(1:02:04) you know people like at the time should we the greeks be and ancient people should we be obsessed with uh proper burial um our ideas about um death are still in front of us so we still are uh this is something that we deal with in our in the 21st century we are thinking about life cycle lots of people you know continue to be worried about and fear death a lot of people don't care what happens to their bodies after after death but on the other hand we have a lot of convention about that still and that's still very meaningful i know as um

(1:02:38) i mean i've conducted many funerals and eulogies and gone to and um burial services and things like that so but what should we care about that in that way and and more importantly really in the case of um the gender roles you know why you know should women have to obey these kind of oppressive gender roles shouldn't women be able to be philosophers not all of the different ancient schools of greek philosophy agreed the platonus yes some of the other ones you know no women can't be philosophers as far as they were concerned

(1:03:10) so you know leaving you guys with that that is um the ancient cynics in an overview [Applause] comments are questions takeaways yes also in the islamic world there's okay and this is exact same they have ancient scenics yes ramadan time they pour over there for example alcohol of them so people think they they drink alcohol and then blame them etc okay cool magnetic aesthetics yeah the bit the bank etc dude they'll say i don't know if everybody can hear you yeah bank et cetera is the same version in the islamic world is uh starting the

(1:04:02) ninth century after after iran and goes to turkey and arab world et cetera yeah so yeah that's a great comment so the idea of it is that um as we always hear that the islamic world is also an error of rome and greeks and rome certainly turkey is you know but also the whole east there and so um these traditions exist among the sufis where the sufis are itinerant you know order one of their orders anyway are attendant minikits and they are also they're also doing performance art to challenge convention right and so p

(1:04:34) they're concerned presumably the the custom that you describe pouring wine all themselves in order to get the scorn of people is presumably to call out those people's hypocrisy or something like that since they weren't actually hadn't actually drunk anything or something okay part of it was also they felt that the path to salvation was to invite people's blame on them oh so they were looking for people to disparage them okay so they can annihilate the ego and etcetera oh okay very good well you know and that's also

(1:05:06) right with the cynics right so it's a blessing to have bad reputation right yes uh i think there's a certainly in christianity there's a tradition that if you deprive yourself of material things you will grow spiritually yes but the sort of bad side of that is some people think that um even if the deprivation is not voluntary i'm thinking of a story by one of the yiddish writers called bunch of the silent and buncha is a beggar and he has nothing he has almost less than nothing and he never complains and the angels

(1:06:00) watch him and they watch he goes to some rich man's door and he's given nothing eventually he starves to death and the angels anticipate with great eagerness his entry into heaven because having been so deprived throughout his life how wonderfully depth not the depth of his spirit will be and so when he comes to heaven they ask him what would he like and he says every morning for breakfast i would like a hot roll with butter and the angels just look at each other isn't it rather disingenuous just disingenuous or rather hypocritical of

(1:06:56) theogenes to be critical of social convention yet at the same time depend upon the social convention of those who work to feed him as he begs in the street i mean if everyone were cynics no one would eat right well yeah so i mean definitely i think that that would be an argument a counter argument you know that that people even at the time are making right and so um the way though um a lot of the philosophers in ancient greece work is that they are not seeing that everybody should be a philosopher or they're not having

(1:07:33) having this um this kind of universal idea that i think we have more of now um and you know on the other side of democracy and where we are um in in our time certainly plato and socrates are um are not you know not talking about philosophers being a universal condition where everybody's ever going to be a philosopher the philosopher is going to be the rarefied person who is the philosopher king you know within that society maybe making the whole society better and i think that diogenes is is in that same way being his own kind of philosopher king

(1:08:08) where he's edifying the whole society around him but is has to be part of it to in order to actually be physically alive right and so you can't all everybody can't all be diogenes you know and so like you say it's not a it's not a it's hypocritical in the sense of it it can't be universally held somebody has to still be um throughout all of time in antiquity and to the present even someone has to farm you know and so there's always gonna have to be the farmer yeah valerie weren't they too making a demonstration i can't recall if it was specifically

(1:08:45) diogenes but making a demonstration that according to of what they consider to be a truth which is that not only as i think socrates put it is virtue the highest good but virtue according to the cynics was the only good and so whatever else you did didn't matter and to demonstrate that you could you know be eccentric and do all this other stuff while being very virtuous so it was a kind of a again a performance art sort of thing of you know showing that the virtue is the most important thing right yeah the only the only the only thing that that

(1:09:25) actually matters so the rest of this doesn't matter even if it's technically necessary for being alive but that's not what matters god uh well from the last comment i well i don't uh see the virtue is important at all okay because what is the virtue for a dog it's just nothing no conventional or no uh well uh maybe he but it's like but the virtue of the dog is living in court with nature right and so part of this idea is that there's a difference between um the natural law or whatever the thing that you're you should be you could be

(1:10:11) doing if we were living that you know in perfect harmony with nature and then there's the nomos which is the customs the convention that is simply inherited and that's what's bad and the virtue is that what the dog is doing or i think we can agree on the virtues thing is not the moral thing yes so virtue according to some natural structure and i have two questions uh one is what is the uh content of this begging because uh doji uh alexander comes and asks for what what he could do for yeah the agent is and there is nothing he could do he could

(1:10:59) deliver yeah so so we so he uh obviously i guess he's not asking for anything in this when we name it for begging but this begging has no content of asking for anything yeah so i think the the anything is uh uh provided uh by the uh [Music] athenians voluntarily and well we we say it is begging but it is a whole different content yeah i believe and what is the nature of this begging except even without the ball yeah and so he doesn't what he doesn't need for anything and maybe the only uh content would be some uh food yeah

(1:11:50) and i don't know do they give him some money which is i presume they're not giving him money but i presume what they're giving is so what you're like uh when elizabeth was telling the story a second ago i was reminded of the moment in fiddler on the roof where tevye you know has making his deliveries he's a farmer he's a gift he delivers milk right and he's a milkman and he gives a delivery to everybody in the village and then where they all have their special types in the village and one of them is run out in the beggar and he and

(1:12:18) then at the end he's done everybody except for renata's like he has got to give it feel his bull he said oh i'm sorry i forgot you you know because he also does that so so that we all have our special types and so one of those is that you know as they're doing their food and deliveries or whatever then they give the certain amount the beggars portion presumably to uh to the beggar or the mendicant in this case you know and so i i'm just anticipating that that's more like how it would be um it's certainly described that way in the um

(1:12:47) in the uh in the among the movement that jesus's followers too so that you you know these like take what they give you you know as opposed to the uh you know keeping kosher like you know uh the pharisees would do there's just you go in you're a beggar take what you're given because that's your um because that's what that's where but that's the lifestyle you've chosen maybe in modern uh times we can uh call him uh better uh like a floater rather than a beggar yeah maybe he floats uh by the uh voluntary uh oh yeah so like so he's living on uh

(1:13:28) couchsurfing.com yeah so essentially he's gone through and he's you know been able to do his hiking and then he goes to the next town and he's signed up for somebody and they say yeah sure welcome i've got i've done couchsurfing and people it's very nice people just let you stay there you get to meet them the second question uh i don't know if you mentioned before i arrived but uh how does this uh the word cynic uh the cynical yeah um evolved from the cynics yeah so yeah so what i'd say is that um there's a there's for one thing it the

(1:14:07) cynics by the end of the roman empire's time have gotten this much worse reputation so that the time people in the athenians like to diagnose enough to get him a new tub and alexander wanted to visit him and this sort of thing so when you're at that stage they're having a high reputation but by the by the later empire when there's so many of kind of cynic wannabes they're not viewed as being it's not viewed as being a high percent profession but rather it's taken out for scorn and so then um when there's a revival i

(1:14:43) think of there's a modern revival of the term and it's essentially the bad caricature that is remembered and so uh and so it's a negative uh it's remembered as kind of a negative skepticism so you're not actually a skeptic but you are skeptical that there's anything positive and um and so it's a it's a wholly modern uh distortion of it and one one very last thing uh about the uh the relation between the aesthetics and the cynics is as i see uh cynics are uh having uh it's it's not that that they're having this deprivals but

(1:15:28) they're they're getting rid of the the loads yeah to get to set them free but in the ascetic way of living uh probably it is something um this deprival becomes the uh the purpose yeah right and that makes it so the question is whether who is in after freedom so cynics are more oriented towards freedom maybe and athletics are uh seeing the virtue uh by by the deprival that creates uh the confinement so maybe their contrary in these uh so it could it could be like maybe doing the same thing but with a different philosophical point

(1:16:24) as maybe you're saying um because it's because it's a different opposite point but um i guess i feel like they're in some senses they are they're similar things about what they're doing so they're showing that that you know like you know the cynic is showing disdain for the element right just because he's fully self-sufficient and and free um and you're saying that the that because the but it depends on how we're defining what um what virtue is so as if the if virtue which isn't moral uh but is with is somehow connected to nature and

(1:17:00) natural natural law theologically that could be understood in in as far as later people are concerned as with is essentially equivalent to god right so the for the stoics who are uh whose system derives from the cynics they see that natural system as essentially being the world's world soul or god and so you are living in accord with natural law which is divine law and certainly later um uh there are uh later roman um descriptions um that offensive essentially calling that a true cynic as opposed to all of these wannabes a true cynic is

(1:17:41) essentially living divine law they're functionally a prophet of zeus and so in that sense i think that there's a lot of overlap between what the ascetics monks are doing in the name of um the christian god has a lot of theological overlap with plato's one so i don't know so i agree with you in the sense that it's completely different but in sense there's a bunch of maybe the same people are attracted to it there's a question here oh sorry yeah i just have a couple of questions and um the first is i know you mentioned that

(1:18:30) um they were quite uh i guess they were rejecting the burial customs and stuff but was there any emphasis on the afterlife and i guess my second question is um if diogenes and kratis if they were going around kind of you know urinating on people yeah were they ever arrested or i mean for indecency and anything like that yeah um so on the first question uh as opposed to any kind of emphasis on afterlife they i think we're actually very focused on how you live this life well and so i do think that there probably wasn't a lot

(1:19:05) of emphasis on afterlife the we don't have their whole writings and so we don't know their you know metaphysics in general but this is before um a lot of people were particularly concerned about afterlife and so as um ideas of afterlife are are going to especially start to be the obsession and then a few hundred years after um diogenes and crates they've talked about it so plato is talking about for example ideas of well maybe we're all reincarnated and things like that so they are thinking about it a little bit but there's nothing i think

(1:19:35) in kratos or diogenes writings to think to know what they thought about it and certainly what i just say you could by that one anecdote that we read he more or less is saying he's gonna he he won't be there in the body anyway so whatever whatever his afterlife state if there is any or whether there's none and he is going to just simply if it's simply a shade or if he simply cease to exist he won't care about the corpse and so that's pretty much all we can say about that in terms of the um are they ever arrested for

(1:20:06) for lewdness um i think that they at certain one point well some of them certainly are and whether or not the the most famous ones i think it diogenes i um he gets kicked out of the city and then gets captured by pirates and then gets sold into slavery and and and then ultimately gets bought by a guy who um ends up making him tutor to his kids and things like that and then moves to corinth where he has a new tub but anyway but but so i think at different times they get kicked out uh certainly um certainly i don't think so they don't

(1:20:40) have the same kind of thing in the ancient world where where people um get put in prison for something like lewdness because they don't have incar mass incarceration you essentially get you could get leg bail so you get exiled you get kicked out you know you're not allowed in the city anymore and so then they got to wander to another city and so that would happen i'm sure to lots of the lots of the the later cynics that are imitating them so valerie had a question yeah um in terms of uh uh influential thinkers and historical

(1:21:11) figures who have practiced um a kind of a dispensing of what may be unnecessary stripping their lives of of everything but the the most necessary and uh returning to a natural way of living and and questioning social convention i'm thinking of the the american figure thoreau and his sojourn on walden pond and well and i'm not american so maybe the americans who are here tonight have a little bit more to say but i'd say he's very much in that tradition and he was such an influential figure on on america both american

(1:21:53) letters and american bohemianism yeah that you know he's sort of worth mentioning as as in that in that tradition yeah and and i'm just looking at that yet that you know sort of other another rendition of uh diogenes in his tub and he makes me think of these uh japanese pod hotels that you hear about where you have like just like a little unit you know that looks like that you can't even stand up and you can spend the night and apparently it's it's not the same thing as renouncing property but it is the same thing it is like

(1:22:24) living in a very small amount of property yeah yes he looks like he's staying in the japanese pod hotel yeah but anyway if anybody has anything to say about thorough there'd be more than you know what i know but he seems to be a kind of an analogy well i i do know that um pretty much no modern writer can talk about the cynics without i mean i threw in that hippie comment you know so they they talk about they have bohemians and and beatniks and and hippies and things like that as as an equate you know as throwing that

(1:22:54) equation in so there are um you know modern parallels that people people draw um well but give elizabeth last question and then we'll break i think and then we'll have one one last question for you oh and then one more from participants okay we'll get the online uh just monica taylor uh she's is an aside uh she would like she's interested in your take on the good and bad points of stoicism the good and bad points of stoicism okay so summarize that in a minute yeah exactly so [Music] so you know there is a um there is something to

(1:23:39) um this idea that anyway if you uh if you experience loss if you are able to you know accept that that's something you don't have control over and move past it there are good points in terms of you know the capacity to natural internal will and strength to overcome you know those kind of hardships um those are those are probably the good virtues that are associated with stoicism i mean one of the the potentially the bad virtues docism is it's quite fatalistic and so uh you are um you have to do this you're doing these things because you

(1:24:21) don't have any external control there is no you know this kind of control and you have to accept um more or less that this is anything that's happening as fated to happen or that it's something that you don't have any control over so it's like in that way like a um an aaa program and we do have a full lecture on the stoics on our website we do yeah so she can look in the archives we we have that and the website on the stoics thanks yeah i was thinking of how in previous times and quite possibly well into our own times

(1:24:57) people in monasteries and convents who spent their lives in prayer were i think considered by the working neighbors around to bring something good to the community and indeed to bring protection to the community uh and i'm wondering if people in ancient greece felt that way about the cynics yeah i think it could be so any i think that in some ways these wandering mendicants these philosophers are also providing um they're specifically talking about you know spiritual spiritual things about um you know doing good edifying

(1:25:38) the communities and and these kind of things and so having them around um may well be considered a good um certainly that um that what you're talking about uh it doesn't so much exists in our society and the at the western um secular society but it it's certainly right here next door so i was yesterday we're doing accountable religions i was at the hindu temple up in richmond hill and there are um a number of um brahmin priests who live on the site they spend the entire time doing rituals um and we're having a friend of mine was talking about how

(1:26:21) uh who he's you know is a canadian full-on you know second generation tamil his mom though um has uh commissioned monks you know back in sri lanka to be doing know like a certain number of prayers and rituals for him you know and so this uh so that's commissioned work there you know the priests are doing those kind of rituals and things that's providing some kind of spiritual benefit as far as the mother is concerned um you know my friend is kind of like beside he doesn't believe in it he doesn't think it's important

(1:26:52) but anyway that it um that is certainly a the residue of that um which is still ongoing throughout much of the world today so we've got one more and then we're going to have to break and go to snacks all right it's bruce as i'm listening to all of this what what's striking me is that there's a just a long long series of people who are trying to get a very small number of principles to apply to absolutely everything and we suffer from this in so many different fields today yeah that you know anyone in the psychological

(1:27:26) field is trying to find one particular approach that's going to solve everything and and sometimes that works in religion and so on at what point do people acknowledge that life is more complex yeah yeah yeah so um certainly one of the critics one of the criticisms of of diogenes and the more extreme cynics is at a certain point you're doing logical reductionism and you have taken things to a logical extreme and so it and you're not living you know so there are other ways to look at stuff in the same way that if we only

(1:27:59) understand all of ourselves you know we we believe in atomic theory and that we're all made up of atoms and things like that but if we are only using um uh atomic understanding of you know we're trying to use only atomic theory to explain why everybody's doing everything it's not a good um it's not a good framework to understand some of the human behaviors because even if it is certainly essential to what we're doing it doesn't it doesn't quickly explain anything so physics tried to do that for years yep this has nothing to do with philosophy

(1:28:35) but i'm a potter and i'm looking at the picture of that pot i couldn't make anything like that yeah i think that's admirable yeah they had an amazing pottery capacity in the ancient world in the athenians so one of the things they were doing besides exporting philosophy i think is they were exporting lots and lots of pots and um and so for example one of the neat things is that the etruscans were were wildly importing them and so like you can find more athenian pots in uh in tuscany i think or in all this kind of

(1:29:08) place than you can in attica anyway so i don't know if that's true look it up but anyway thank you guys very much [Applause] [Music] you