Ancient Cynicism Research Articles

Shameless Dogs: Cynics and Nonhuman Animal Ethics

Abstract Various philosophical systems have been applied to questions of nonhuman animal ethics, but the ancient Cynics have been ignored despite their close association with dogs and their commitment to philosophy as a way of life. After explaining the neglect and clearing away some obstacles to treating Cynic ethics seriously, this article looks closely at Cynic shamelessness and its connection with conventions that may fail to withstand critical scrutiny. It then goes on to discuss Diogenes’ relationship with food conventions and explores what ancient Cynicism has to offer when it comes to thinking through virtuous relationships between humans and other animals.

After Critique: Cynicism, Scepticism and the Politics of Laughter

In 1983, two philosophers, Michel Foucault and Peter Sloterdijk, engaged with ancient Cynicism and the outspokenness and laughter of Diogenes as a critical practice. Foucault and Sloterdijk did so to position themselves ‘after’ critique: ‘after’ a period of and ‘beyond’ a certain style of dogmatism and theoretical deadlocks that troubled left thinking in the early 1980s (and continue to do so today). I show how Foucault and Sloterdijk, while differing in their critical politics, both read Diogenes’ politics of truth as radical subversive otherness. While Diogenes performed this antagonizing critique from a subaltern position, his politics nevertheless risked ending up in a self-righteous intransigence to know the truth. As an alternative, I turn to another politics of laughter in Hellenistic philosophy, that of the Thracian Maid, and its sceptical impulse that is situated ‘before’, ‘beyond’ and ‘after’ critique in the space of what Hans Blumenberg calls Nachdenklichkeit (pensiveness).

The Cynics With and Without Foucault

Abstract: In the last three years of his life, Michel Foucault made a sudden and unexpected turn to the ancient Cynics. In lectures from 1982 to 1984, and most notably in his final Collège de France lectures from 1984 ( The Courage of the Truth: The Government of Self and Others II ), he sought to recover from the Cynics a potential for critique, militant revolution, and a courageous means of speaking truth to power. Foucault's engaged scholarship is inspiring, but in many respects, it is indistinguishable from conventional scholarly approaches to ancient Cynicism. In both cases, the Cynics are thought to comprise a philosophical movement that is founded on a core of principled commitments, for instance to virtuous self-restraint, ascetic training, the pursuit of freedom from externalities of all kinds, rationalism, self-mastery, self-sufficiency, individualism, and cosmopolitanism. To reassess Foucault's analysis, I first examine the pitfalls of this picture, which rests on a largely Stoic retrojection. I then offer an alternative reading of the early Cynics, Diogenes first and foremost, that shows them in a different light. In the final part of the article, I return to Foucault to see how he fares once a different framework for understanding the Cynics is put in place. Foucault's effort to view Cynicism as a bridge to early Christian practices is only the most extreme and most questionable upshot of his final legacy.

THE IMPACT OF CYNICISM ON THE FORMATION OF A CRITICALLY REFLECTIVE FORM OF WORLDVIEW

This article delves into the concept of cynicism, examining it as a philosophical movement and exploring its role in shaping a critically reflective worldview. It conducts a theoretical analysis of the historical origins of cynicism, focusing on the ancient Cynics and their core principles of life. Additionally, the article investigates the influence of cynicism on contemporary society.The article provides a comprehensive description of the fundamental concepts of cynicism. These include the rejection of material possessions, the pursuit of a simple lifestyle, and skepticism towards social hierarchies. Moreover, it underscores cynicism as a tool for critically questioning societal norms, cultural conventions, and moral values. By engaging in critical analysis and reflection, cynicism has the potential to facilitate the construction of a worldview rooted in skepticism and examination.The authors emphasize the significance of cynicism as a critically reflective form of worldview that encourages communities to ask probing questions, analyze various issues, and seek ways to address them. By challenging established norms, cynicism serves as a catalyst for societal progress. It inspires individuals and communities to engage in critical thinking, enabling them to explore alternative paths and foster a more equitable and inclusive society.In conclusion, the article highlights the transformative power of cynicism in driving societal advancements. By nurturing a critically reflective worldview that embraces continuous questioning, growth, and the pursuit of a better future, cynicism can contribute to positive social change. It encourages individuals and communities to challenge the status quo, critically evaluate existing systems, and actively seek improvements for a more just and inclusive society.

Генезис юродства в византийской традиции

In this article, an attempt was made to make a preliminary religious analysis of the phenomenon of foolishness from the perspective of the modern methodology of the Dutch researcher J. Waardenburg. It was noted that earlier in the Russian science of religion, this phenomenon practically did not become an independent object of study. The systematic concept of J. Waardenburg assumes a consistent consideration of religious facts from the perspective of four approaches of equal importance: historical, comparative, contextual and hermeneutic. The collection and primary analysis of empirical data is a necessary and preliminary condition for a full-fledged study of the phenomenon of foolishness. Foolishness arises in Byzantine society and is perceived ambiguously by the contemporaries. The article indicates the sources of the phenomenon of foolishness in the Byzantine tradition: ancient cynicism in the person of Diogenes Laertius, healed the demoniacs who spend a lot of time near temples, Old Testament prophets. This work also reflects the historical process of the gradual separation of foolishness as an independent rank of holiness. Its biblical justification is the multiple references on the pages of the Gospel to the madness of the world and the wisdom of the unwise. The fact that the foolishness was known to the culture of the Romans is evidenced by the fact of the spread of the phenomenon of false ugliness, which the official Church tried to fight. The reason for the appearance of foolishness in Byzantium can be called the extinction of spiritual life after its rise in the first centuries of the spread of Christianity. The tradition of honoring extraordinary ascetics, as well as the formation of iconography, was slow. Only at the end of the VIII century the process began to gain momentum, which was connected with the approval at the Seventh Ecumenical Council of the veneration of saints as a necessary element of Christian dogmatics. In the Byzantine Church, six holy fools were canonized. Despite their small number, the hagiographic literature of Christian ascetics of the first centuries often offers examples of episodic foolishness. The article concludes that the genesis of foolishness in the Byzantine tradition required a long time for its development. In Russian culture the phenomenon of foolishness has found its full-fledged development, becoming an integral part of Russian culture. The author assumes, that this phenomenon requires its further empirical study as an objective religious fact.

A Reading of Nietzsche’s Revaluation of all Values as a Cynical Dialectic

Abstract This paper tries to interpret Nietzsche’s revaluation of all values as a dialectical structure of Cynicism. Ancient Cynicism is regarded as the thesis, modern cynicism as its antithesis, namely its decadent form. In recent years this decadence has been somewhat overcome by the attempt to underline a new Cynicism, which can be seen as a synthesis.<fnote> I’m well aware that Nietzsche did not appreciate Hegel. But I find this way of presentation quite convincing in the reading of his revaluation as a dialectical structure. And the dialectical structure is not meant in the Hegelian sense, but in the broader sense of the word. Although Nietzsche strongly criticizes Hegel’s dialectic, one can also find ‘dialectical’ features in his philosophy. The three transformations of the spirit in Thus Spoke Zarathustra can be understood as a dialectical structure: The camel that obediently carries the heavy old values is considered the thesis. The lion, which no longer respects the old values and creates only freedom, is considered the antithesis. But only the child can create new values and so the final transformation of the spirit is considered the synthesis. Moreover, Oliver Dier sees an inner dialectical movement in Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal recurrence (Oliver Dier, Die Verwandlung der Wiederkunft, in: Nietzsche-Studien, 30 (2001), 133–174). According to Werner Stegmaier, the word “great” in late Nietzsche also has a dialectical sense (Werner Stegmaier, Nietzsches Befreiung der Philosophie. Kontextuelle Interpretation des V. Buchs der ‘Fröhlichen Wissenschaft’, Berlin a. Boston 2012, 29). Roberto Esposito considers Nietzsche’s biopolitics to be “inscribed in the dialectic of immunity and community” (Quoted from Vanessa Lemm, Nietzsche and biopolitics: Four readings of Nietzsche as a biopolitical thinker, in: Sergei Prozorov a. Simona Rentea [eds.], The Routledge Handbook of Biopolitics, New York 2017, 50–65; here: 51).</fnote> I then compare Nietzsche’s revaluation of all values with the coin metaphor of Diogenes. The revaluation is close to Cynicism, both in a literary as well as in a philosophical way. The starting point of the revaluation is obviously Cynical. But Nietzsche takes the will to power much further than the Cynics. I subsequently discuss the danger that the revaluation of all values will result in a cynical nihilism and the way Nietzsche overcomes it with his doctrines of the eternal recurrence and the Übermensch. Finally, the paper concludes with the claim that Nietzsche completes his revaluation with his own Cynicism as a synthesis.

Bad parrhesia: the limits of cynicism in the public sphere

Bad parrhesia: the limits of cynicism in the public sphere

Militantismo filosófico y espiritualidad política en Foucault

En los últimos cursos que impartió en el Collège de France, entre 1980 y 1984, Michel Foucault dio un protagonismo creciente en sus investigaciones al cinismo antiguo. Su estudio histórico de la ética antigua, orientado primero hacia la experiencia moral de los placeres, y luego al tema del cuidado de sí y de las prácticas ascéticas a través de las cuales se constituye la subjetividad en el marco de una estética de la existencia, termina con el ejemplo de los cínicos a causa del fallecimiento de Foucault en junio de 1984. No obstante, los cínicos parecen representar al final de esos análisis un momento privilegiado, en cierto modo una culminación. El presente artículo pretende indagar en las razones de ese privilegio sobre la hipótesis de que, en los cínicos, Foucault encuentra respuesta al problema del aspecto voluntario de las resistencias al poder.

The Function of Cynicism at the Present Time by Helen Small

Reviewed by: The Function of Cynicism at the Present Time by Helen Small Jeffrey R. Di Leo Helen Small. The Function of Cynicism at the Present Time Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xvi + 264 pp. Few ancient Greek thinkers were as colorful or memorable as Diogenes of Sinope—and perhaps no philosophical school from the period is as historically important to understanding contemporary neoliberal culture and society than Cynicism, the one with which his work is associated. As there are no extant writings by Diogenes, much of what has been attributed to him comes from Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of Famous Philosophers, which is itself a collection of literary and oral traditions, and from literary representations by ancient writers such as Lucian and Dio Crysostom. Moreover, for all of its historical and continuing significance, there is both no extant treatise by anyone directly associated with ancient Cynicism and no record from antiquity that systemizes Cynic thought. Cynicism and the Cynics, which in Greek (kynikos) literally means "dog-like," took their name from "Cynosarges," the building in ancient Athens that housed the school, one that flourished for about a thousand years, from roughly the fifth century before the common era to the fifth century of the common era. Cynicism generally contends that anything that disturbs the austere independence of the will is harmful and should be avoided. The Cynics either ignored or despised both the conventions of society and material possessions—behavior which provoked opposition from both Greek and Roman society. The cynicism of Diogenes might be characterized as follows: (1) There is an ethical standard established by nature that is observable in animals and through cross-cultural comparison inferable to humans; (2) The most fundamental values of society including those of ethics, politics, and religion are at odds with achieving an ethical life because society is at odds with nature; (3) The rigorous discipline (askesis) of corporeal training and exemplary acts is required for humans to realize happiness and their nature because askesis prepares humans to live in the natural conditions of life; (4) The aim of askesis is freedom, self-sufficiency, and happiness in life; and (5) Provocative acts of free speech and the defacement of tradition through parody and satire aimed at subverting established authority exemplify the freedom of the Cynic (Schreier 40; Branham et al. 8–9). Regarding the subversion of established authority, Diogenes is infamously said to have told Alexander the [End Page 370] Great to "Stand out of my light" when the leader of the Greeks offered to grant him one wish while he was sunning himself in the Craneum (Diogenes Laertius 137). Michel Foucault can be credited with a revival of critical interest in the Cynics and Cynicism through his public lectures and later philosophy. In his last public lectures at the Collège of France, for example, held from February to March of 1984, he speaks extensively about the Cynics and their view of life. Of particular note is his commentary on the Greek sources of care (epimeleia) of self, which he regards as beginning in Plato's Laches, a Socratic dialogue where bios appears more the object of care than the soul. For Foucault, Cynicism is the first example of a philosophical practice centered upon the theme of bios as the object of care. But his interest in Cynicism is not merely because of its emphasis on care of self, rather than care of soul—a dominant topic of his later philosophy. It is also because of its emphasis on parrhesia, that is, truth-telling. For Foucault, in Cynicism we find "the requirement of an extremely distinctive form of life—with very characteristic, well defined rules, conditions, or modes—is strongly connected to the principle of truth-telling, of truth-telling which pushes its courage and boldness to the point that it becomes intolerable insolence" (Foucault 165). What is all the more remarkable for Foucault is that the connection between living a certain way and dedication to truth-telling is achieved by the Cynics without the development of a formal system of philosophy, that is to say, "within a fairly rudimentary theoretical framework" (165). Consequently, Foucault regards Cynicism as a form...

Cynicism and Christianity in Antiquity by Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé

Reviewed by: Cynicism and Christianity in Antiquity by Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé Carson Bay Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé Cynicism and Christianity in Antiquity Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019 Pp. xvii + 278. $75.00. Public masturbation and copulation, belligerent shouting, hitting people with sticks—these are a few things for which Cynics were known in antiquity. Such a movement appears prima facie an unlikely correlate to early Christianity. But this same movement was also known for poverty among its disciples, rejection of societal norms, pursuit of ascetic morality, and dismissal of the traditional gods. For this reason, scholars have depicted Jesus and early Christians as Cynic-like, and in late antiquity, the Cynic-Christian nexus did evince some puzzling permutations. All of this makes particularly valuable a book written by one of the foremost authorities on ancient Cynicism which examines all evidence for connections between Cynicism and Christianity (here an English translation of Cynisme et christianisme dans l’antiquité [Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2014]). The first hundred pages of Goulet-Cazé’s book are an up-to-date introduction to Cynicism in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. This is an excellent introduction to ancient Cynicism. Goulet-Cazé ultimately dismisses the distinction between a “soft” Cynicism (friendly, adaptable, relaxed) and an “austere” Cynicism (rough, rigorous, audacious) propounded by, for example, Abraham Malherbe. Instead, she simply posits different temperaments/personalities between figures like Crates and Diogenes. Goulet-Cazé acknowledges the dichotomy posed by Diogenes Laertius: was Cynicism a school of thought (αἵρεσις) based on δόγματα, or was it rather a “way of life” (ἔνστασις βίου)? Cynicism’s status as a philosophy and the question of who could do Cynicism hinged upon the question. Goulet-Cazé shows that the issue was complex under the Roman Empire. A related question: was ancient Cynicism literate and elite, or popular and “street”? Goulet-Cazé [End Page 473] shows that, by and large, “Cynicism in the imperial period was a Cynicism of the popular classes” (78–79). But she acknowledges elite and non-elite practitioners and sees a literature expressive of “popular Cynicism’s state of mind” (85), namely the pseudepigraphical Letters of Diogenes and Crates and Pseudo-Lucian’s The Cynic. These works embody what Goulet-Cazé terms “genuine Cynicism,” defined “from the moment that a bodily asceticism began . . . with a moral goal that involved rejecting all the δόξαι imposed by society, and human naturalness began to display itself . . . without pretending” (88). The end of Chapter One compares this practice to Stoicism, which Goulet-Cazé casts as more spiritual, less ascetic. Chapter Two explores contacts between Judaism and Cynicism, summarizing the Judaism-and-Hellenism discussion and surveying pertinent sources: the Septuagint, Meleager of Gadara, Philo, Josephus, Oenomaus of Gadara, and the Talmud. There emerges a picture of minor literary engagement between Jews and Cynics, the possibility of interaction in ancient Gadara, and the parallel phenomena of Hellenistic chreia in Jewish/Christian and Cynic literatures. Chapter Three begins by rehashing scholarship on “Q,” the much-theorized yet still hypothetical proto-source of the Synoptic tradition. Goulet-Cazé engages scholars who have discussed relationships between Q and Cynicism. John Kloppenborg and Gerd Theissen appear exemplary, as their research emphasizes parallels between Q/Jesus and the Cynic literature/movement without assuming actual interaction, ideological or literary. F. Gerald Downing, Burton Mack, John Dominic Crossan, the Jesus Seminar, and especially Bernhard Lang receive less hospitable reading. Showing that similarities between Christianity and Cynicism are usually superficial and their perspectives completely different, Goulet-Cazé graciously concedes that the “Cynic Hypothesis” has “brought to light many interesting similarities between” Cynicism and Christianity (183). Still, the final words of the book will be: “. . . I hope I have at least helped . . . by warning against invalid appeals to surface similarities and against ideological bias of any kind” (248). The end of Chapter Three deals with Paul, who engaged “a common sociocultural legacy” of popular philosophy to which Cynicism and Stoicism contributed (196). The upshot of the chapter: Cynicism and earliest Christianity were in ways socially and literarily akin, yet any genetic relationship between them is highly speculative. Chapter Four will be the most interesting to the average JECS reader. It deals with Cynicism and Christianity in late antiquity. First Goulet-Caz...

Kosmopolityzm jako praktyka międzygatunkowa. Parę uwag o gościnności nieantropocentrycznej

Derridiańskie pytanie o paradoksalną (bez)warunkowość zakodowaną w pojęciu gościnnościjest także pytaniem o zasięg i przedmiot odniesienia: jeśli gościnność ma być tym,co rządzi wszelką interakcją, to być może nie ogranicza się ona wyłącznie do relacji międzyludzkich.Celem artykułu jest prześledzenie pojawiających się w ostatnich latach nieantropocentrycznychwizji gościnności, związanych z rozwinięciem Kantowskiego pojęcia kosmopolitycznegoprawa w odniesieniu do zwierząt i ich politycznej podmiotowości. Artykułpodejmuje wątki zwierzęcia kosmopolitycznego, kosmopolityki, kosmopolityzmu rozumianegonielogocentrycznie, jak w tradycji starożytnego cynizmu, kosmopolitycznych inspiracjiw nurcie posthumanizmu oraz projektu państwowej polityki opartej na ładzie kosmopolitycznym– zoopolis.

Exile, Use, and Form-of-Life: On the Conclusion of Agamben’s Homo Sacer series

The last two volumes of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer series are concerned with developing a theory of use. This article offers a critical assessment of the two concepts, use and form-of-life, that form the heart of this theory: how do these two notions offer a solution to the problem of bare life that forms the core of the Homo Sacer series? First, the author describes how the original problem of bare life is taken up in The Use of Bodies and how the notion of use offers an important additional characteristic of bare life. Second, inspired by Foucault’s analysis of ancient Cynicism, the author discusses in which sense the type of ‘solution’ Agamben offers to the problem of bare life might be seen as an heir to ancient Cynicism and how this interpretation clarifies his connection of form-of-life and exile. Third, the author critically assesses the different usages of use that we can find in Agamben, by comparing how Franciscan usus, Pauline chrēsis and Platonic chrēsis are taken up in his analysis. Fourth, following Foucault, the author deepens the Platonic sense of use and its relation to taking care of justice. The article concludes with a critical assessment of Agamben’s reading of Plato’s myth of Er, in which the motifs of use, exile, and care are gathered.

Ethical-cultural Maps of Classical Greek Philosophy: the Contradiction between Nature and Civilization in Ancient Cynicism

This article restores the peculiar ethical-cultural cartography from the philosophical fragments of Ancient Greek Cynicism. Namely, the fragments of Anthistenes, Diogenes of Sinope, Crates, Dio Chrysostom as well as of the ancient historians of philosophy (Diogenes Laertius and Joanes Stobaeus) are mainly analyzed and interpreted. The methods of comparative analysis as well of rational restoration are applied in this article.The authors of the article concentrate on the main characteristics of the above mentioned cartography, that is, the contradiction between maps of nature and civilization. The article comes to the conclusion that the basis of this contradiction is the concept of the main value as well as virtue in the above mentioned cynicism, namely, natural radical temperance. According to ancient cynics, this virtue is absolutely incompatible with pleasure-driven civilization, as the latter annihilates the former. Therefore, cynics interpreted the whole territory of the world known at that time as divided between maps of nature and civilization that never overlap or even intersect. Moreover, according to ancient cynics, the territory covered by maps of civilization is considerably smaller than that enframed by the maps of nature. Moreover, the areas of nature are continuously being diminished, as civilization resolutely goes ahead. In such a situation that threatens survival of human nature the only possible way out is a return to the natural value of radical temperance. After cynics, the only effective strategy of achieving that challenging goal is askesis as excercises of temperance dedicated both to body and spirit.The authors of the article also give a certain SWOT analysis of the above mentioned cartography in the context of contemporary society. According to them, such a cartography possesses both strong and weak points. The main weak point is the contradiction itself between maps of culture and civilization. As a matter of fact, civilization does not annihilate the possibility of natural temperance, whereas a human being, according to his/her nature, is a creator of culture and civilization. On the other hand, the main positive aspect is an emphasis on virtue of temperance, which is actual, significant and relevant in any epoch, culture and civilization, and which is pretty much forgotten nowadays.

PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE PROTEST ACTIVISM: REMINISCENCES OF "GREAT REFUSAL"

The article examines the protest form of individual and mass mentality in conditions of social anomie. The author retrospectively turns to the philosophical reflections of ancient cynicism and the Critical Theory of Society, which are based on the ideas of the «Great Refusal», as well as to the practical experience of protesting in Ukrainian realities.

Киники и эпоха эллинизма

It is established that the weakening of moral and ethical rigorism in the cynical doctrine in the Hellenistic era was associated with the radicalism of the ancient Cynics and the impossibility of its further preservation. It is also shown that in the philosophy of the Cynics in the Hellenistic era, two tendencies emerged: the alienation of the individual from society and the desire for political activity. Despite the involvement of individual Cynics in politics, Cynicism in the Hellenistic era retained its deeply individualistic character.

MLA 2018—New York: Political Philosophy in Melville

MLA 2018—New YorkPolitical Philosophy in Melville Chair: Munia Bhaumik, Emory University Click for larger view View full resolution Meredith Farmer, Nathan Wolff, Ana Schwartz, and Colin Dewey. Photo courtesy of John Bryant. Just as Ishmael faced the icy and "stubborn storm" on his way to the chapel in chapter 7 of Moby-Dick, many of the scheduled panelists "fought their way" through the bomb-cyclone to attend the MLA Convention in New York City. Unfortunately, numerous flight cancellations prevented some of the panelists, including me, from flying into the city. Meredith Farmer and Colin Dewey valiantly assumed the helm and steered the panel. [End Page 130] Because inclement weather prevented many panelists from traveling, I have included all the accepted paper abstracts. This panel explores the intersection between Herman Melville's writing and political philosophy, including reflections on democratic theory, formal experimentation, affect, the role of citation, the inclusion of political treatises, headlines and events, and references in Melville's work to political thinkers (Thomas Paine, Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke, Thomas Jefferson, the Cynics, and Aristotle, among others). Our panelists show how Melville draws specifically upon political philosophy, referencing texts such as Hobbes's Leviathan, Paine's Rights of Man, and the Declaration of Independence. The panel responds to a number of recent provocations to think about Melville in political terms: Maurice S. Lee's tracing of a "subversive political philosophy," Jason Frank's argument on the centrality of Melville to American political thought, Jennifer Greiman's work on democracy, and the recent collections Melville's Philosophies, edited by Branka Arsić and K.L. Evans, and Melville among the Philosophers, edited by Corey McCall and Tom Nurmi, which also excavate the conceptual relevance of his writings to materialism, (post) humanism, and environmental studies. "Diogenes in Disguise": Cynicism and Politics in The Confidence-Man Michael Jonik University of Sussex In a time when misanthropes and conmen have co-opted the political scene and the truth is seemingly fleeing like a scared doe, Melville's The Confidence-Man offers an especially relevant diagnosis of the dynamics of power, political speech, and modes of dissembling throughout our contemporary situation. To this end, this paper examines the modality of Melville's political philosophical lineage, namely his relation to the ancient Cynics. Whereas Melville's misanthropes might suggest a Machiavellian statecraft or Hobbesian wolfish war of all against all, his frequent references to Cynicism reveal a deeper classical precedent to his political thought. In this novel, as part of the masquerade of characters, Melville introduces a "Diogenes in disguise," recalling not only Diogenes himself but also the classical satires of Lucian, or later Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, in which the anti-foundational figure of the Cynical philosopher takes center stage. For Melville, Cynicism opens a multifaceted and dynamic position from which his characters can instantiate The Confidence-Man's critique of antebellum culture, thought, and capitalism. What is more, Melville's Diogenes eschews the complicity among thought, capitalism, and power. Diogenes's Cynic life-philosophy, animated as the bios kunikos, marks a becoming-animal of politics in which the "multiform pilgrim species, man" might merge into other, [End Page 131] ungenial collectivities. I draw on Foucault's late lecture, "The Courage of Truth," to explore how Melville's notoriously dialogic and dissembling characters, and especially his Diogenes figure, might nonetheless reveal some of the difficulties of "fearless speaking" (parrhesia) for both Melville's time and our own. Melville and Democratic Portraiture: Moby-Dick as American Laocoön Paulo M. Loonin Washington University in St. Louis This paper addresses Melville's engagement with fundamental questions of democratic theory, both political and aesthetic. Is the democratic portrait possible? Can one represent and enact distinction and recognition (requirements of the democratic citizen) without stratification and inequality (traditional entailments of the portrait genre)? These questions are enacted in Melville's Moby-Dick and are particularly evident in descriptions (portraits) of Captain Ahab and of his ship as a microcosm of the globalizing-American state. The status of Ahab as dictator and of the Pequod as democracy are old questions, but they take on new valances in the context of portraiture. The investigation of political equality becomes...

Wieland, Cynics, Goethe

Wieland’s idealizing treatment of ancient Cynicism in his novel Σωκράτης μαινόμενος oder die Dialogen des Diogenes von Sinope (1770) provoked a critical response from the young Goethe. The elements of Cynicism Wieland took care to extrude were turned by Goethe into a set of positive ideals. Not only his Götter, Helden und Wieland (1772), but a number of shorter dramatic works of the period, including Satyros (1773), profited from this inversion of values. However, this aesthetic divergence should not obscure the fact that both Wieland and Goethe were drawn to Cynicism because of its significance as a testing-ground of Enlightenment thought.

Febre do rato como deseducação de corpos e discursos: uma interpretação foucaultiana

O texto interpreta o filme Febre do rato, de Cláudio Assis, à luz das concepções foucaultianas sobre a heterotopia, sobre corpos e prazeres como resistência ao dispositivo da sexualidade, bem como sobre as posteridades do cinismo antigo, entendidas aqui como manifestações contemporâneas de resistência aos processos de educação normalizadora de corpos, sexualidades e discursos. Inspirando-nos no filme, estabelecemos uma relação entre as análises foucaultianas sobre as manifestações escandalosas da arte de viver dos cínicos da antiguidade e as formas de atuação de coletivos contemporâneos de inspiração queer, como a Marcha das Vadias, cujas performances corporais exploram a potência do escândalo e do dizer-verdadeiro contra as violências que se abatem sobre mulheres e outras minorias.

Ancient cynicism: between authenticity and counterfeiting

Principe fondateur de l’experience philosophique cynique, la falsification de la monnaie de Sinope accomplie par Diogene et (ou) son pere placa la philosophie cynique sous le signe d’une nouvelle frappe des coutumes et des valeurs, la contrefacon devenant la garantie de l’authenticite de la pratique philosophique. Pour realiser cette contrefacon, les cyniques preconiserent une methode specifique - l’ascese physique a finalite morale - et choisirent un symbole - l’accoutrement - mais celui-ci finit par connaitre au fil des siecles une sorte d’usure. Il y eut meme des charlatans qui affichaient le manteau, la besace et le bâton, mais sans pratiquer l’ascese. Cet accoutrement devait cependant connaitre une belle fortune puisque le τρίβων devint le symbole et du philosophe et du moine. Chez les philosophes comme chez les lettres, la contrefacon cynique suscita les reactions les plus diverses : de l’admiration a la moquerie, de l’idealisation a la condamnation. A l’evidence, la nouvelle frappe de la monnaie cynique interpela tout autant les stoiciens que les chretiens, tout autant un homme de lettres comme Lucien qu’un homme de pouvoir et de culture comme Julien. Le cynisme a reussi a prouver – sa reception jusqu’a l’epoque contemporaine en temoigne –, que le concept d’une philosophie populaire est legitime.

MEAT, MUSCLE AND MIND: DIOGENES AND THE ATHLETES

The ancient Cynics occupy a unique place in Hellenistic thought for the physicality of their self-representation. On the one hand, Diogenes is depicted accusing philosophers, in particular Plato, of idle talk, himself advocating double training (mental and bodily), and performing his philosophy through acts of “street theatre” in various public spaces. On the other hand, he derides athletes and the folly of those following them to athletic festivals. While the two directions of criticism differ in aim and scope, they must be viewed in tandem to establish the Cynic view of the body.