Antisthenes was NOT the Founder of Cynicism

6 min readOct 12, 2023

In a recent Big Think article titled 5 schools of philosophy that died out by Scotty Hendricks, the author references Stoic propaganda, stating:

Founded by Antisthenes, another student of Socrates, the school’s most famous teacher was Diogenes of Sinope.

This is not the only example of attributing some facet of philosophy to the wrong person; see my previous article on why the popular and oft-shared Epicurean Trilemma is not by Epicurus.

The following excerpt is taken from my book, in progress, Dangerous Ideas, that deals with the topic of Antisthenes and why he is not the founder of the Cynic school.

Antisthenes (~446–366 BCE)

Antisthenes is notable for three reasons. One, he was wrongly credited as the founder of the Cynic school, and two, he was a pupil of Socrates; points which came to be tied together centuries later for the purposes of Stoic propaganda. Third, unlike Democritus who included the gods as separate beings in his speculations of the universe, Antisthenes formulated a conception that God and nature are two sides of the same coin. This notion is important as it was both new and a critical distinction that would be repeated by Strato, Pliny, and Spinoza. He apparently wrote ten volumes of works, which now only survive in fragments, and so we only know of his thoughts on the divine in his physics through others such as Cicero.[1] For essentially making the gods unnecessary, Cicero took issue with him, writing:

Antisthenes, again, destroys the significance and essential nature of the gods when he declares in the work entitled “On Natural Philosophy,” that there are many gods believed in by the people, but only one that is known to nature. . . .
. . . For some maintain that nature is a kind of irrational force producing compulsory movements in bodies, others that it is a force possessing reason and order, advancing, as it were, methodically, and showing clearly what it does to achieve each result, and what end it follows, — a force to whose skill no art, or handiwork, or artificer can attain by imitation.[2]

Antisthenes came to be associated as the founder of Cynicism through an unnecessary attempt to link Zeno of Citium (~334–262), the founder of Stoicism, back to Socrates. Recall from the discussion on Democritus, that Socrates was the first to formulate the Argument from Design. Sedley argues that the model for intelligent design developed by Socrates was a rebuttal to atomism, as prior to the atomist challenge there was no need to have formal arguments for the existence of the gods. The pre-Socratic era came to a close, then, due to the merits of the arguments formed during this period, as Socrates was able to formulate his response, recorded in Xenophon, only after atomism was developed.[3] Sedley further notes that the Argument from Design is absent in the era of Plato and Aristotle, and only with Stoicism, which he categorizes as an ‘updated version’ of the philosophy of Socrates, does the argument reappear.[4] Sedley also highlights the similarities between Stoic thinking and that of Socrates in a section by Sextus Empiricus in Against the Physicists. In paragraphs ninety-two to one hundred seven, Sextus makes several links between the philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Zeno. In one paragraph, Sextus cites a section from Memorabilia by Xenophon verbatim, which Sedley notes was held as canon by the Stoics. Further, Sextus repeats arguments put forward in Timaeus by Plato, which Sedley calls the ‘ultimate creationist manifesto,’ a book vital to Stoic cosmology and that was a large part of the curriculum at Plato’s Academy. Sextus also explicitly writes, ‘And Zeno of Citium, taking Xenophon as his starting-point,’ making a direct link from Socrates to Stoicism.[5] Hence, this is why Socrates is so important to the succession of the Stoic lineage.

The Socratic succession, as documented by Diogenes Laërtius and others, is given as Socrates, Antisthenes, Diogenes of Sinope, and Crates of Thebes (~365–285) to Zeno, and it was considered true for centuries.[6] Professor of Latin and history, Donald Dudley, notes that the Stoics recognized that Zeno credited the Cynics, through Crates, with teaching Zeno his system of ethics.[7] While Zeno’s moral ethic descended from Socrates via the Cynics, Zeno derived his Stoic conception of the gods from Polemo, the third head of Plato’s Academy.[8] Therefore, the need to create this artificial succession was redundant, given the ties Zeno already had to Socrates through Polemo and the Academy.

Dudley asserts that the succession of philosophical thinkers was created as a means to convey added respect to Zeno; a process repeated in the artificial Davidic lineages of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke created to borrow legitimacy. The teacher of Crates,[9] Diogenes of Sinope, discussed below, was considered one of the ‘Stoic saints’ along with the others in the succession, and so a link needed to be made through Diogenes because of the impact his moral ethics had on the later Stoic school that developed. The fabricated story of Antisthenes being the teacher of Diogenes likely started with Sotion of Alexandria between 200 and 170 BCE, and this had become convention by the start of the Roman period which others copied in their biographies.[10] Dudley points out that there are more differences between Antisthenes and Diogenes than the handful of surface similarities, such as both being ascetics. Dudley also notes that Aristotle only mentions one Cynic, Diogenes, and in his mention of Antisthenes and his followers he never connects the two. Further, Crates never mentions Antisthenes in any of his writings.[11] The current generally accepted scholarly opinion is that associating the founding of Cynicism with Antisthenes as the teacher of Diogenes has no basis in reality.[12]

Footnotes

[1] Perseus Digital Library, Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Book VI. i. para. 2; 15.

[2] Cicero 1896, 28; 116–17. (On the Nature of the Gods Book I. para. xiii; II. para. xxxii.)

[3] Sedley 2007, 82–83; 86; 89; 139.

[4] Sedley 2007, 205–06.

[5] Sedley 2007, 206; 217–20; 225–26; 229; 133. For the comparisons, see Memorabilia Book 1.4.8 and Against the Mathematicians Book IX, para. 94; and Book IX, para. 104 and Timaeus 30b1-c1.

[6] Perseus Digital Library, Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Book I. Prologue 15: ‘There is another which ends with Chrysippus, that is to say by passing from Socrates to Antisthenes, then to Diogenes the Cynic, Crates of Thebes, Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, Chrysippus.’

[7] Dudley 1937, 97–99.

[8] The entry for Zeno by Diogenes Laërtius (Book VII i. 2) mentions Crates, but also lists other teachers, such as Polemo. Sedley (2002, 46) asserts the Academy under Polemo (314–270) expanded on Plato’s craftsman, with an infusion of Aristotelian physics (p. 42), seeding the ground for what would develop into Zeno’s Stoic physics. Sedley notes a summary of Academy doctrines, including the physics, is preserved by Cicero (1896, 433–441) in Academica Book I. para. 24–29. Perhaps Zeno found the Cynic philosophy lacking for his tastes, and sought out a philosophy more attuned to his need to include God.

[9] Perseus Digital Library, Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Book VI. v. para. 85; also Book I. Prologue 15.

[10] Dudley 1937, 1–4; 25; 97–99. Herculaneum Papyri 155 gives a similar list of names.

[11] Dudley 1937, 1–2. Cf. Internet Classics Archive, Aristotle, Rhetoric Book III. 4 (Antisthenes) and 10 (Diogenes, the ‘Dog’).

[12] Long 1996, 31–32.

References

Aristotle. Rhetoric Book III.

Cicero. (1896). De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods).

Diogenes Laërtius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers.

Dudley, D. R. (1937). A History of Cynicism: From Diogenes to the sixth century A.D.

Long, A. A. (1996). The Socratic tradition: Diogenes, Crates, and Hellenistic ethics.

Plato. Timaeus.

Sedley, D. (2007). Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity.