Who’s a cynic? Is it:
the leader who publicly claims to support their constituents, while privately exploiting and manipulating their constituent’s hopes and dreams for their own advancement?
the teacher who bemoans the inadequacies of the educational system while simultaneously deferring the problem of education by assuming that the only conceivable solution to the problem education is more and better education?
the university academic who bemoans the systemic flaws within their social institutions and yet is endlessly strategic in their interventions to affect change?
the jaded professional who believes that everyone is ultimately and everywhere driven by selfish motives, and that there is no hope of change?
the activist that, without explanation, nails his scrotum to the ground in front of Lenin’s mausoleum; and who then later, right after being granted amnesty in France, thanks the country’s leaders by setting fire to their national bank?
The answer, as you might have already guessed, is: all of them. According to Ansgar Allen, the author of “Cynicism”, each of the people above are examples of a type of modern cynic. The leader is the “Master-Cynic.” The teacher? A “progressive” cynic. The university academic is a strategic cynic, while the jaded professional is a garden variety “modern” cynic. The activist (the real-life Petr Pavlensky) is a “street cynic”, and is the closest cousin we have today to the ancient Greek Cynics that kicked off the multi-millennia evolution of Cynic history that has led us to the multi-faceted equivocation of cynicism today.
Allen’s work charts cynicism’s history, beginning with a overview of the life, action, and ideas (and anti-ideas) of the ancient Greek Cynic Diogenes. A speaker, thinker, and itinerant provocateur, Diogenes could bring crowds to a state of rapture through his fiery and fearless oration — only to suddenly stop and, without explanation, piss, crap, or masturbate, in front of (and sometimes, on) everyone. The meaning of his provocations were multi-faceted. He lived as an itinerant, owning nothing but a cloak and staff, although for some time he did claim a giant, abandoned clay jar for his home. He asserted that his homeless and possession-less lifestyle freed him from all cultural trappings and obligations — in other words, he believed that, among all others in Athens, only he was truly free (an approach that early Christian ascetics would appropriate for themselves several centuries later). He used his freedom to practice fearless speech, denigrating anyone and everyone that he saw fit. He was often called a “dog” — both on account of the way he lived, and on account of the way he shamelessly performed his bodily duties in front of others. (The term “cynic” is derived from a Greek work meaning “dog”).
Cynicism as a more or less disorganized and unstable movement continued for centuries under Greek and Roman rule, challenging authority through its scatological provocations, without ever claiming any specific aims or ends, until it eventually died along with the Roman empire. Cynic thought, however, continued to influence western culture. First, it was propagated through collections of Cynic aphorisms that were systemically incorporated into oratorical pedagogy and taught to students throughout the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Later, cynic thought went through a number of literary interventions (such as Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens and Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pentagruel) and philosophical interventions (Jean Jacques Rousseau’s “cynical” critiques of the corrupting effects of civilization; Marquis de Sade’s cynical elevation of bodily pleasure to grotesquely divine heights) all of which began to transform the original conception of Cynicism into the multi-headed equivocation that is the cynicism we know today.
Despite its concision, Allen’s book attains a surprising level of breadth and depth. He covers over two millennia of history, activity, and thought, without sparing us any of the confusing muddle that all of this history has saddled us with today. One significant oversight, I must admit, in Allen’s analysis is psychological, particularly with respect to the ancient Cynics. To explore the meaning of Diogenes’s itinerant life and scatological provocations without at least broaching the subject of psychoanalysis seems to me a rather glaring omission. Here is someone who experimented with living an unrepressed life in the birthplace of Western civilization — and yet the psychoanalytical meaning of both Diogenes’s acts, as well as the meaning of the public’s reactions, are left untouched.
Despite this omission, I still highly recommend this book to anyone interested in exploring cynicism — its past, its refractory thought, and its future (or at least, the future Allen hopes for).
