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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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7. Cynic Asceticism. Lucian's version of Cynicism
represents the aspect of Cynicism that has become best
known thanks to a profusion of anecdotes. The most
varied anecdotes, some strictly rigorous and coarsely
hedonistic, some serious and burlesque, and both sym-
pathetic and hostile to civilization, have attached
themselves to Diogenes of Sinope. Various scholars
have maintained that the rigorous type of anecdotes
is primary and genuinely Diogenic, whereas the
hedonistic type of anecdotes was introduced in the
Diogenes tradition by Crates and especially his disci-
ples Bion and Menippus, as a more human reaction.
A strict and rigorous movement also continued, which
actually even attempted to outdo Diogenes himself.
Diogenes appears as a misanthrope in the pessimistic
28th letter. Most words of rebuke occur in the Cynic
texts of Roman imperial times. The creation of the
legend began immediately after Diogenes' death and
took place simultaneously along two lines—the strict
and rigorous, and the hedonistic.

At a definite point we can see how a rigorous type
of asceticism evidently influenced the Diogenes legend.
Onesicritus, Alexander's admiral, tells, in Strabo, the
story of his encounter with an Indian ascetic sect, the
so-called Gymnosophists. Naked and motionless, in
various positions on the rocks, they endured the heat
of the equatorial sun until the evening. The motive
for their harsh asceticism is conveyed in the following
words:

Man trains the body for toil in order that his opinions may
be strengthened, whereby he may put a stop to dissensions
and be ready to give good advice to all, both in public and
in private.

Onesicritus is comparing oriental asceticism with the
form of asceticism he had come to know at home in
Greece in the Cynicism of Diogenes. The comparison
is to the disadvantage of Cynicism. In the Gymnosoph-
ists he found ascetics of a far more radical type than


632

he had previously encountered. In this respect he puts
Pythagoras, Socrates, and Diogenes on the same plane:
they failed because they put law before nature. This
rigorous type of asceticism is reflected in the anecdotes
about Diogenes rolling in the hot sand or embracing
in winter statues covered with snow, and others.

Within the Cynic movement itself the increasing
oriental influence on Greek religion, following the time
of Alexander, created a necessity to maintain the
school's saint Diogenes as a thoroughgoing, rigorous
ascetic. Onesicritus' comparison between Indian and
Greek ascetic philosophy was no isolated phenomenon.
The story recurs as one of the sources in a papyrus
from the second century B.C.

It remains an open question how much of the harsh,
rigorous asceticism goes back as far as the historical
Diogenes. It may be assumed that it does, to a certain
extent. The history of ideas shows clearly that the
eudaemonistic, Socratic asceticism, which is pedagog-
ically motivated and has its background in the peda-
gogical debate of the fifth and fourth centuries, belongs
to Cynic philosophy from its beginning.