Antisthenes of Athens: setting the world aright

Luis E. Navia

Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001 
ISBN: 0313316724 (hb), pp. xii + 177, £51.95 

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Practical Philosophy  (Book Reviews) Spring 2003 Volume 6.1

Reviewed by: Trevor Curnow

Antisthenes was one of those who, like Plato, gathered around Socrates. Unlike Plato, his works have been lost and he is a largely forgotten figure in the history of philosophy. Even those who remember him disagree on his importance. In particular, disputes continue to this day as to whether or not he should be regarded as the originator of Cynicism. By far the most extensive extant source of our knowledge of him is the ‘life’ written by Diogenes Laertius, which dates from no earlier than the third century AD and which is included in this book. Otherwise there is little to go on except odd comments and fragments distributed amongst a variety of works, including those of Plato with whom, apparently, he did not get on.

 

The original Cynics pursued one particular interpretation of ‘the examined life’, rejecting social conventions as contrary to nature. For the Cynics, ‘examination’ amounted to stripping life down to its bare essentials, and they were renowned for their asceticism. Unfortunately, when we come to knowledge of Antisthenes’s own life, we often lack even the bare essentials, and no amount of speculation, repetition and imagination on the part of this book’s author can disguise that fact.

 

Navia is an interesting interpreter of the fragmentary evidence, and his observations concerning Antisthenes’s views on language and literature are instructive. However, he makes quite a little go quite a long way, and much of what is relevant and useful here can also be found in his Classical Cynicism: a critical study (Westport: Greenwood, 1996).

 

There seems little doubt that Antisthenes was a figure of some significance, but there is much more doubt concerning what that significance was. To some extent, the question as to whether or not he should be regarded as the first Cynic is not important. The Cynics were not a ‘school’ in the normal sense and so may not have had a founder in the normal way. Perhaps the most that can be said is that Antisthenes sought to replicate in his own life the lessons he had learnt from Socrates and did so in a sufficiently impressive way for others to take him, in turn, as their model.

 

 

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