The Cynics. John MacCunn

“The Cynics”, Jonh MacCunn. En International Journal of Ethics, vol. 14, No. 2 (Jan.
1904), pp.185-200
p.185: “Gifted with impressive intellectual force, with unbounded capacity of contempt, and with
a pungent humor, they did not know how to spare either men or institutions”. “Like most ascetic
systems it had its roots, in part at least, in revolt against the world. Nothing pleased them. With a
trenchant dichotomy that reminds one of Carlyle, they divided mankind into the handful of wise
men and innumerable fools”. “Political institutions, property, the family, luxury in all modes,
culture at least in many aspects -all serve but as targets for Cynic projectiles”.
p.186: “a temple is no holier than any other place”. “it would betray a lack of humor to read
all these flings, flouts, sneers, sarcasms, as if they were meant for philosophic formulae”.
“That element of "measure," "proportion," "symmetry," so dear to the Greeks, to them was
wanting”.
p.187: “Disgust with social life was part of it. But it was not the main part, nor would it ever
have been so bitter had it not found inspiration elsewhere in the life, and in the doctrine, of
Socrates”.
p.190: “. But on one point there was entire agreement, on the vital point that, in things moral, it is
the spirit that profiteth, or, as Antisthenes has it, that "men are rich and poor not in their
establishments, but in their souls." No philosopher of either the ancient or the modern world, not
even Kant, has so insisted that in comparison with the good will all else is as dross.
It was in fact just this which led them to leave their master far behind. In identifying virtue with
the enlightened or rational will, Socrates had made virtue inward. But he had never meant that,
therefore, virtue was not outward. On the contrary, he had frankly accepted the life of Athens as
he found it. He had done his duty as a citizen on the field and in the dicastery. He had submitted
himself to the laws, even when they adjudged him to die. And in giving his life to the mission of
personally influencing individuals, he had taken it for granted that the men he dealt with were,
like himself, living the ordinary civic life of the average Athenian. Not so the Cynics”.
p.191: “Seizing upon the truth that virtue is, in its essence, inward (a state of will or reason), they
went on to infer that, therefore, it must not be outward; and in that uncompromising spirit
declared that there is no true moral life for man till he has cut himself loose from every tie, every
resource, every institution which social life has to offer”. “Not wife and children alone, but
friends, wealth, reputation, public position, institutions, all things on which men have set their
hearts-are they not all "hostages to fortune"?”.
p.192: “It is all a progressive discovery of how many things he can do without, a prolonged
process of self-denudation”. “We can now perhaps understand how the two aspects of Cynicism
stand related. There was the revolt against society; there was the conviction inspired by Socrates
that the seat of virtue is the rational will”. “in this case rags, filth, and indecency must not
obscure the fact that Cynicism was the first thorough-going plea for moral freedom which
the western world had seen”.
p.193: Cosmopolitismo, aristocracia: “They were cosmopolitans when as yet the Christian and
Stoic cosmopolitanism was a long way off. Nor had they anything of the aristocratic leanings of
Plato. Far from it; "philosophers of the proletarit" they were, after their own fashion, men with
a mission who were convinced that philosophy had its message to the multitude-the multitude
whom Plato declared to be inherently incapable of philosophy”.
p.194: “they turned their backs upon speculative philosophy”.
p.195: “, in their excessive pre-occupation with the moral life, they came to regard speculative
philosophy as an intellectual luxury, or, in other words, as but one of the modes of culture
which fell under their ban”.
p.196: “t is that the whole speculative and scientific attitude of mind is fundamentally diverse
from that of the restless and crowded life of affairs”. “For Plato tells us also that, however
strenuously the thinker must take the burden of the commonwealth on his shoulders, his heart
and
mind are really elsewhere, and ever ready to quit politics for that serene pursuit of truth in which
his closing years are to be spent. And Aristotle follows Plato. There is no mistaking the
sharpness of the antithesis in which he sets the practical and the contemplative life, nor can
words be more explicit than those in which, in the tenth book of "The Ethics," he tells us that, in
proportion as a man rises to the life of thought, the less does he stand in need of those outward
resources, and of that part-partnership in action with his fellow-citizens, without which the moral
life is impossible”.

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“The Cynics”, Jonh MacCunn. En International Journal of Ethics, vol. 14, No. 2 (Jan.

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