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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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3. Sophistic Background. From the point of view
of the history of ideas Cynicism as a practical-philo-
sophical movement begins with the Sophists. Most of
its theoretical motivation and ideological substance is
derived from the Sophists' nominalistic theory of
knowledge and materialism, the radical opposition to
society and its conventions through the assertion of
natural law as against positive law, and a ruthless and
unrestricted individualism. From the pedagogy of the
Sophists came also the interest in practical ethical
questions and educational problems. Antisthenes, who
began as a Sophist and in spite of his attacks on his
former teacher Gorgias always remained a Sophist,
later on attached himself to Socrates, whom he admired
highly and to whom he probably stood in a close
relationship. He was with Socrates in the prison, when
Socrates drank the hemlock. In Socrates Antisthenes
met with what was later associated with the Cynic type
in its serious form: poverty, voluntary asceticism,
physical insensibility and hardiness, psychical firmness,
and absolute personal integrity. Out of this encounter
Cynicism was born. With Antisthenes' successor
Diogenes the theoretical motivation receded to give
place to a practical demonstration against established
social behavior for the benefit of an individualism
pushed ad absurdum.