Diogenes by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884)
The best thing about the Cynics is their illustrious name, which means “dog-like.” Barking dogs. Yeah, I like them already. Although Gnostics and anarchists (or libertarian socialists) may not share the Cynic predilection for lifting our legs to pee on someone’s table, or engaging in public flatulence contests, there are deep lines of continuity between all three schools of thought. Anarchists as such were a much later development on the historical timeline, but a wide variety of anarchist thought is informed by Zeno of Citium (c. 334 BC – c. 262 BC), the founder of the Stoics, who was in turn heavily influenced by the earlier Cynics. For purposes of simplicity, I’m going to name Zeno the founder of western Anarchism.
But Cynicism (not with a small “c”) shares more than ancient Greek roots with both Gnosticism and anarchism. In the first place, much like Gnosticism and anarchism, Cynicism is less of a philosophy and more of a way of life, an approach to the world which leads to a deeper human experience.
Some other parallels between the Cynics, Gnostics and anarchist theory include:
1. A general questioning of “reality” and our place in it; refuting norms, conditional thought, and systems and institutions that uphold these constructs. A Gnostic example of this is found in the Treatise on Resurrection: “Suddenly the living are dying - surely they are not alive at all in this world of apparition! The rich have become poor, rulers overthrown: all changes, the world is an apparition.” (48:20-27). (Also see Acts 4:29-30)
2. From this questioning and refutation, we open up to a new way of thinking and relating to ourselves and others.
3. Finally, with this new way of thinking and approaching the world, we simultaneously become truer to ourselves and better able to participate in an honest and self-affirming community (i.e., the allegorical “New Jerusalem”, etc.). Good and evil are rejected as bipolar mirages, and the cosmos becomes an intricate balance between various forces.
The Cynics preached against the social and economic institutions of their day. Diogenes of Sinope adopted a simple lifestyle of self-sufficiency (autarkeia), austerity (askēsis), and shamelessness (anaideia). The same can be said for the ancient Gnostics, and Christian accounts of Jesus’s attitude towards the established order in the bible. (cf. John 4:1-16, Luke 17:21, Matt 25:31-46; 23:8-12, Mark 10:25, etc.) These ideas have clearly influenced anarchist thought throughout the ages.
The Cynics were born out of a pivotal concept introduced by Socrates, and affirmed by the fabled inscription above the Oracle at Delphi: “Know Thyself.” It is ironic that Plato, who delivered almost everything we know about Socrates, could have been so vastly different in his thinking from Zeno. Zeno’s Republic, which he wrote circa 300 BC is the antithesis of Plato’s. It is the very early description of an anarchist society, plain and simple. Unfortunately, Zeno’s Republic has been lost to antiquity, although we know much about it though other writers such as Plutarch and Diogenes Laërtius.
Just as everything that we know about Socrates and Zeno comes to us from others, likewise most of what Western scholarship knew about Gnosticism until the late 20th c. came from apocryphal and critical sources. While scholars tend to argue over the minutia of each Gnostic, Cynic or Anarchist tract, it may be a better approach to accept the obvious: Cynicism, Gnosticism and anarchism must be understood as being views of life and the cosmos written by many divergent authors. We cannot expect to read one Cynic, one Gnostic, anarchist, or libertarian socialist and appreciate the totality of some invented consensus.
There are, however, striking similarities between these schools of thought, beginning with the concept usually termed in the Greek word parrhesia, which is mentioned in Cynic, Stoic, Gnostic, Christian, and anarchist literature. “Mentioned” is too laid-back a word: parrhesia is in fact a key aspect of all of these approaches. To quote Foucault:
The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind: he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse.
Michael Hardt wrote an article in the New Left Review last year on the subject of the Cynics, parrhesia, and particularly how they became the focus of Michel Foucault’s research and lectures just before he died in 1984. In this article, Hardt takes pains to show Foucault’s fascination with a series of events that begins with the visit of the great Cynic Diogenes of Sinope, to the Oracle at Delphi. Hardt explains a number of things in Foucalut’s investigation that will no doubt ring familiar to students and practitioners of Gnosticism, anarchism and libertarian socialism. Recounting the revelation given to Socrates by the Oracle, Hardt points out that the great philosopher was named by the Delphic Oracle to be “the wisest of men,” which Socrates interpreted to mean that he was the most aware of his own ignorance.
When Diogenes visited Delphi, the Pythia, or high-priestess of the Oracle, urged him to “falsify the currency.” Both Foucault and Hardt were quick to realize that Diogenes’ father, Hicesius worked in the mint of Sinope, and that the words for “currency” and “norms” or “laws” in Greek are closely related. (Norm = nomos; currency = nomisma.)(158) Thus the mandate of the famous Cynic was to question norms and laws and give new value to them through acts of subversion. The values expressed here by the Cynics do not echo, but predate similar attitudes held by later Gnostics, Christians, and the communism of the anarchists.
For all three schools of thought, the Cynics, Gnostics and anarchists, we can demonstrate several pivotal aspects which are shared in common beyond their mutual mistrust of "reality." The unique aspect of being human creates a kind of “otherness” with nature, and yet affirms the importance of our integration with it and a responsibility that is beyond it. To understand and relate to others and nature we have to take personal responsibility to be able to affect social attitudes (and therefore, affect change) as well as our own. We should not exalt human laws, norms, or institutions, but recreate them through the subversion of their value. True knowledge comes only after we question the validity of our cultures, beliefs, institutions, and other experiential prejudices.
Although our self-awareness needs to be free from the judgment of our peers, society, and economic modes of survival, the ultimate goal of the Cynic, the Gnostic, and the anarchist-communist is to create the conditions for all people to reveal themselves and live their lives to the fullest. That self-revelation means, by definition, that we relinquish the baggage, the properties, possessions, customs, and bigotries that divide people and lead to alienation. Or as the Johannite Gnostic Liturgy recites, "Material things are to be used, and people are to be cherished, and immorality is made manifest when people are used, and material things cherished."
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Sources:
Downing, Francis Gerald., Cynics and Christian Origins (Edinburgh, T & T Press, 1992)
De Acosta, Alejandro., ‘Cynical Lessons,’ The Anvil, (July 2011)
Hardt, Michael., ‘Late Foucault,’ New Left Review, issue 298, no.64 (August 2010), pp.151-160
