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.
