This term came up in class discussion yesterday. I said a student sounded like a cynic. He took offense. Based on this definition(conveniently supplied here by generative AI), I'd have to say the shoe fit, more or less. But that's not name-calling, it's philosophical clarification.
Note also: the original cynicism of ancients like Diogenes is a respectable philosophical perspective (even if some of Diogenes' reputed behavior was gross and indecent)-"based on the idea that people should not accept assumptions and habits that prevent them from questioning conventional dogmas"…
Modern cynicism is a pessimistic attitude that involves distrust of social and ethical values, and a rejection of the need to be involved in society. It can also be described as a psychological state that makes people resistant to intellectual persuasion and moral reflection. [1, 2]
- Distrust: Cynics are skeptical of the motives of others and the ability of people to make ethical choices. [1, 3]
- Rejection: Cynics reject the need to be involved in society and may not be interested in dialogue. [1, 4]
- Abrasive speech: Cynics may use abrasive, confrontational, and debunking speech. [4]
- Unimpressed by ideals: Cynics may not be impressed by high ideals. [4]
Origins of modern cynicism [2]
- The original cynicism was a philosophical movement that began in the fifth century B.C.
- It was based on the idea that people should not accept assumptions and habits that prevent them from questioning conventional dogmas.
Potential consequences of cynicism [5]
- Cynicism can lower mood and well-being.
- Studies have linked low well-being and unhappiness to lower immune system effectiveness and overall health.
Generative AI is experimental.
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He lived in a barrel ("cynic" means "dog-like")...
He said he was looking for an honest man...
He violated social convention (and was accused of public indecency) but was also known as "a poor man's Socrates" who got people to question their preconceptions and prejudices...
Diogenes of Sinope (fourth century BC) is too irascible a character not to share some anecdotes about him from the compendium of Diogenes Laertius on the Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. They illustrate the precepts by which he lived: that personal happiness is satisfied by meeting one's natural needs and that what is natural cannot be shameful or indecent. His life, therefore, was lived with extreme simplicity, inured to want, and without shame. It was this determination to follow his own dictates and not adhere to the conventions of society that he was given the epithet "dog," from which the name "cynic" is derived. (As to why he was called a dog, Diogenes replied, "Because I fawn upon those who give me anything, and bark at those who give me nothing, and bite the rogues.") Sold as a slave, he pointed and said, "Sell me to this man; he needs a master." The man heeded the advice, and entrusted Diogenes with his household and the education of his children... (continues)
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"Diogenes of Sinope, on the Black Sea (c. 400–c. 325 BC), came to Athens and was taken by the ideas of Antisthenes. But he thought that Antisthenes had failed to live up to his own teachings, which would not have been surprising. Diogenes made up for this magnificently, especially in eccentricity and unconventional living. One of the best-known tales about early philosophers says that Diogenes lived in an earthenware tub; another says that he set a fashion among the Cynics for public masturbation.
True or not, the scores of stories about his wacky words and deeds show what a disconcerting impression he made. He revelled in the nickname of 'the dog' (kyon), which is how the Cynics, or 'dog-men', got their name. It was given to him because he sought the uncomplicated, instinctive and shameless life of an animal—animals being the true exponents of 'natural' values. He had a sharp tongue and was quick to savage those he disagreed with, which may also have contributed to his nickname. He was particularly hostile to Plato and liked to play practical jokes on him. He apparently turned up at one of Plato's lectures brandishing a plucked chicken in order to heckle him contemptuously on a point of definition—a low-life echo of Socrates' 'wisdom full of pranks'.
Diogenes' disturbing renunciation of conventional life evidently did not go so far as to make a hermit of this 'Socrates gone mad'. Life was too busy for that. There were people to be persuaded, examples to be set, there was preaching to be done and practical advice to be given. His activities seem to have made him quite popular. When his tub was destroyed, the citizens of Athens are said to have clubbed together and bought him a new one. His sincerity and the simplicity of his life seem to have been respectfully admired from a safe distance, although his teachings were far too radical to attract more than a small number of committed followers or to have any direct political effect.
He taught that happiness consisted in satisfying only the most basic needs and in disciplining oneself not to want any more. Everything else was to be renounced—riches, comfort, ordinary family life—because none of it made one a morally better person. All the restrictive trappings of civilization in the city-state, from taboos against incest or eating human flesh to the institution of marriage, social-class barriers and traditional religion, were to be overcome for the same reason. The ideal society would be a loose community of spartan, self-sufficient, rational beings who indulged in any and every form of relationship to which all parties consented, unbound by conventional prohibitions.
Much of what Diogenes said was meant to shock; he probably did not make a regular habit of breaking all the taboos he condemned. But he did want to jolt people into examining their lives. Over the years, and especially in the first two centuries of the Christian era, Cynicism attracted all sorts of wandering hippies and free-loving, back-packing beggars, who were keener on general denunciation and on ridiculing society than on philosophy or doing good. Such people, and the satirical and sarcastic literature that was influenced by the movement, gave rise to the modern meaning of 'cynical'. But the earliest Cynics, Bohemian though they were, earnestly saw themselves as moral teachers and seem to have performed a useful service." — Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance by Anthony Gottlieb
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— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
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