CYNICS
The Cynics developed the negative attitude of the Socratics toward wealth to its extreme in asceticism. Their doctrine was subversive of all economic interest. Antisthenes, the founder of the school, was a contemporary of Plato, a Sophist in his youth, but later associated with the Socratic circle. He appears prominently in the Symposium of Xenophon.[[915]] He urged a return to nature in the literal sense.[[916]] His book on the nature of animals (περὶ ζώων φύσεως) probably presented examples from the animal world as models for natural human living. Like many writers of his time and later, he idealized the life of primitive and barbarous peoples.[[917]] In utter antithesis to Aristotle,[[918]] he declared city life and civilization to be the source of all injustice, luxury, and corruption. In his opinion, Zeus punished Prometheus, not because he envied men any good, but because the discovery of fire was the source (ἀφορμή) of all effeminacy and luxury for men.[[919]] Material wealth was, to him, if not an absolute evil, something about which men should be entirely indifferent, for in essence, good and evil could have only a moral reference.[[920]] The craving for wealth or power was a vain illusion. Nothing was good for a man except what was actually his own,[[921]] and this was to be found only in the soul.[[922]] Wealth without virtue was not only worthless, but a fruitful source of evil,[[923]] and no lover of money could be either virtuous or free.[[924]] He thus advanced beyond the Socratic doctrine of ability to use as the criterion of value.
However, though despising wealth, Antisthenes upheld the dignity of free labor. He believed it to be a good by which alone virtue is gained, the source of independence.[[925]] Like the rest of the Cynics, he was thus doubtless opposed to slavery. The Cynic principle that all diversities in men, except differences in moral character, were merely accidental was a direct argument against slavery.[[926]] It is also probable that he held the Cynic doctrine that intrinsic value in money is unnecessary.[[927]]
Diogenes of Sinope, “the philosopher of the proletariat,” became more famous than Antisthenes, owing to his eccentric personality.[[928]] He carried the Cynic doctrine of wealth to its reductio ad absurdum by applying it literally in his own life. His repudiation of wealth and civilization was even more emphatic than that of his predecessor. He taught that wealth without virtue is worse than poverty.[[929]] Lovers of wealth are like men afflicted with the dropsy, always athirst for more.[[930]] The desire for money is the very source and center (μητρόπολιν) of all ills.[[931]] Virtue cannot dwell either in a wealthy state or in a wealthy house.[[932]] Poverty better accords with it, and is no real cause of suffering.[[933]] Truly noble men despise wealth and are above being troubled by poverty and other so-called ills.[[934]]
Diogenes was doubtless opposed to slavery and taught that under proper conditions of the simple life there would be no reason for it.[[935]] In his opinion, the truly free were not slaves, even though they might be in a state of servitude, but the mean-spirited were slavish even though free.[[936]] He wrote a Republic in which he seems to have advocated fiat money to take the place of the hated gold and silver[[937]] and to prevent the extensive accumulation of movable wealth. He also advocated the community of wives and children,[[938]] and perhaps some system of land tenure other than private ownership.[[939]] Crates, the poet of the Cynics,[[940]] expresses similar sentiments of scorn for wealth, supreme regard for virtue,[[941]] and glorification of poverty,[[942]] Menippus and Monimus left little of economic interest.