Antisthenes

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Antisthenes bigraphy, stories - Philosophers

Antisthenes : biography

445 BC –

Antisthenes (Jones, Daniel; Roach, Peter, James Hartman and Jane Setter, eds. Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary. 17th edition. Cambridge UP, 2006. ; c. 445 BCE – c. 365 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Socrates. Antisthenes first learned rhetoric under Gorgias before becoming an ardent disciple of Socrates. He adopted and developed the ethical side of Socrates’ teachings, advocating an ascetic life lived in accordance with virtue. Later writers regarded him as the founder of Cynic philosophy.

Life

Antisthenes was born c. 445 BCE and was the son of Antisthenes, an Athenian. His mother was a Thracian.Suda, Antisthenes.; Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 1 In his youth he fought at Tanagra (426 BCE), and was a disciple first of Gorgias, and then of Socrates, at whose death he was present.Plato, Phaedo, 59b. He never forgave his master’s persecutors, and is even said to have been instrumental in procuring their punishment.Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 10 He survived the Battle of Leuctra (371 BCE), as he is reported to have compared the victory of the Thebans to a set of schoolboys beating their master.Plutarch, Lycurgus, 30. Although one source tells us that he died at the age of 70,Eudocia, Violarium, 96 he was apparently still alive in 366 BCE,Diodorus Siculus, xv. 76.4 and he must have been nearer to 80 years old when he died at Athens, c. 365 BCE. He is said to have lectured at the Cynosarges,Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 13 a gymnasium for the use of Athenians born of foreign mothers, near the temple of Hercules. Diogenes Laërtius says that his works filled ten volumes, but of these, only fragments remain. His favourite style seems to have been dialogues, some of them being vehement attacks on his contemporaries, as on Alcibiades in the second of his two works entitled Cyrus, on Gorgias in his Archelaus and on Plato in his Satho.Athenaeus, v. 220c-e His style was pure and elegant, and Theopompus even said that Plato stole from him many of his thoughts.Athenaeus, xi. 508c-d However, Cicero, after reading some works by Antisthenes, called him "a man more intelligent than learned" ().Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, xii. 38 He possessed considerable powers of wit and sarcasm, and was fond of playing upon words; saying, for instance, that he would rather fall among crows (korakes) than flatterers (kolakes), for the one devour the dead, but the other the living.Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 4 Two declamations have survived, named Ajax and Odysseus, which are purely rhetorical.

Notes

Philosophy

According to Diogenes Laetius

In his "Lives of the Eminent Philosophers," Diogenes Laetius lists the following as the favorite themes of Antisthenes: "He would prove that virtue can be taught; and that nobility belongs to none other than the virtuous. And he held virtue to be sufficient in itself to ensure happiness, since it needed nothing else except the strength of a Socrates. And he maintained that virtue is an affair of deeds and does not need a store of words or learning; that the wise man is self-sufficing, for all the goods of others are his; that ill repute is a good thing and much the same as pain; that the wise man will be guided in his public acts not by the established laws but by the law of virtue; that he will also marry in order to have children from union with the handsomest women; furthermore that he will not disdain to love, for only the wise man knows who are worthy to be loved."Diogenes Laërtius, Book VI. Chapter 1, 10

Ethics

Antisthenes was a pupil of Socrates, from whom he imbibed the fundamental ethical precept that virtue, not pleasure, is the end of existence. Everything that the wise person does, Antisthenes said, conforms to perfect virtue,Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 11 and pleasure is not only unnecessary, but a positive evil. He is reported to have held painJulian, Oration, 6.181b and even ill-repute ()Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 3, 7 to be blessings, and said that "I’d rather be mad than feel pleasure."Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 3 It is, however, probable that he did not consider all pleasure worthless, but only that which results from the gratification of sensual or artificial desires, for we find him praising the pleasures which spring "from out of one’s soul,"Xenophon, Symposium, iv. 41. and the enjoyments of a wisely chosen friendship.Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 12 The supreme good he placed in a life lived according to virtue, – virtue consisting in action, which when obtained is never lost, and exempts the wise person from error.Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 11–12, 104–105 It is closely connected with reason, but to enable it to develop itself in action, and to be sufficient for happiness, it requires the aid of Socratic strength ().