14 March 1984

Abstract

TODAY I WILL SPEAK about the Cynic life, about the bios kunikos as true life. As I tried to show you last week, what seems to me to be both difficult and important to understand in Cynicism is the following paradox, which is nonetheless fairly simple in itself. On the one hand, Cynicism appears in the form of a set of features which it shares with many philosophies of the time; there is something commonplace and ordinary in the theses it advances and the principles it recommends. On the other hand, it is stamped by a scandal which has constantly accompanied it, a disapproval which surrounds it, a mixture of mockery, repulsion, and apprehension in reaction to its presence and manifestations. Throughout its existence, from the Hellenistic epoch to the beginning of Christianity, Cynicism was both very familiar and nevertheless strange in the landscape of Greco-Roman philosophy, thought, and society. It was ordinary, commonplace, and it was unacceptable. All in all we could say that a sizable number of eminent philosophers found it fairly easy to recognize themselves in Cynicism and gave a positive image of it. There is some evidence of this in important texts. You remember that Seneca gave a portrait of Demetrius the Cynic, backed up by quotations and references, as one of the most important philosophers of his time.¹