It is remarkable that another Cyrenaic, Hegesias, recognized this incongruity between sensation and universality, which last is opposed to the individual, having what is agreeable as well as disagreeable within itself. Because, on the whole, he took a firmer grasp of the universal and gave it a larger place, there passed from him all determination of individuality, and with it really the Cyrenaic principle. It came to his knowledge that individual sensation is in itself nothing; and, as he nevertheless made enjoyment his end, it became to him the universal. But if enjoyment is the end, we must ask about the content; if this content is investigated, we find every content a particular which is not in conformity with the universal, and thus falls into dialectic. Hegesias followed the Cyrenaic principle as far as to this consequence of thought. That universal is contained in an expression of his which we often enough hear echoed, “There is no perfect happiness. The body is troubled with manifold pains, and the soul suffers along with it; it is hence a matter of indifference whether we choose life or death. In itself nothing is pleasant or unpleasant.” That is to say, the criterion of being pleasant or unpleasant, because its universality is removed, is thus itself made quite indeterminate; and because it has no objective determinateness in itself, it has become unmeaning; before the universal, which is thus held secure, the sum of all determinations, the individuality of consciousness as such, disappears, but with it even life itself as being unreal. “The rarity, novelty, or excess of enjoyment begets in some cases enjoyment and in others discontent. Poverty and riches have no meaning for what is pleasant, since we see that the rich do not enjoy pleasures more than the poor. Similarly, slavery and liberty, noble and ignoble birth, fame and lack of fame, are equivalent as regards pleasure. Only to a fool can living be a matter of moment; to the wise man it is indifferent,” and he is consequently independent. “The wise man acts only after his own will, and he considers none other equally worthy. For even if he attain from others the greatest benefits, this does not equal what he gives himself. Hegesias and his friends also take away sensation, because it gives no sufficient knowledge,” which really amounts to scepticism. “They say further that we ought to do what we have reason to believe is best. The sinner should be forgiven, for no one willingly sins, but is conquered by a passion. The wise man does not hate, but instructs; his endeavours go not so much to the attainment of good, as to the avoidance of evil, for his aim is to live without trouble and sorrow.”[164] This universality, which proceeds from the principle of the freedom of the individual self-consciousness, Hegesias expressed as the condition of the perfect indifference of the wise men—an indifference to everything into which we shall see all philosophic systems of the kind going forth, and which is a surrendering of all reality, the complete withdrawal of life into itself. It is told that Hegesias, who lived in Alexandria, was not allowed to teach the Ptolemies of the time, because he inspired many of his hearers with such indifference to life that they took their own.[165]
[d. Anniceris.]
We also hear of Anniceris and his followers, who, properly speaking, departed from the distinctive character of the principle of the Cyrenaic school, and thereby gave philosophic culture quite another direction. It is said of them that “they acknowledged friendship in common life, along with gratitude, honour to parents, and service for one’s country. And although the wise man has, by so doing, to undergo hardship and work, he can still be happy, even if he therein obtains few pleasures. Friendships are not to be formed on utilitarian grounds alone, but because of the good will that develops; and out of love to friends, even burdens and difficulties are to be undertaken.”[166] The universal, the theoretically speculative element in the school, is thus lost; it sinks more into what is popular. This is then the second direction which the Cyrenaic school has taken; the first was the overstepping of the principle itself. A method of philosophizing in morals arises, which later on prevailed with Cicero and the Peripatetics of his time, but the interest has disappeared, so far as any consistent system of thought is concerned.
[3. The Cynic School.]
There is nothing particular to say of the Cynics, for they possess but little Philosophy, and they did not bring what they had into a scientific system; it was only later that their tenets were raised by the Stoics into a philosophic discipline. With the Cynics, as with the Cyrenaics, the point was to determine what should be the principle for consciousness, both as regards its knowledge and its actions. The Cynics also set up the Good as a universal end, and asked in what, for individual men, it is to be sought. But if the Cyrenaic, in accordance with his determinate principle, made the consciousness of himself as an individual, or feeling, into real existence for consciousness, the Cynic took this individuality, in as far as it has the form of universality directly for me, i.e. in as far as I am a free consciousness, indifferent to all individuality. Thus they are opposed to the Cyrenaics for while to these feeling, which, because it has to be determined through thought, is undoubtedly extended into universality and perfect freedom, is made the principle, the former begin with perfect freedom and independence as the property of man. But since this is the same indifference of self-consciousness which Hegesias expressed as real existence, the extremes in the Cynic and Cyrenaic modes of thought destroy themselves by their own consequences, and pass into one another. With the Cyrenaics there is the impulse to turn things back into consciousness, according to which nothing is real existence for me; the Cynics had also only to do with themselves, and the individual self-consciousness was likewise principle. But the Cynic, at least in the beginning, set up for the guidance of men the principle of freedom and indifference, both in regard to thought and actual life, as against all external individuality, particular ends, needs, and enjoyments; so that culture not only sought after indifference to these and independence within itself, as with the Cyrenaics, but for express privation, and for the limitation of needs to what is necessary and what nature demands. The Cynics thus maintained as the content of the good, the greatest independence of nature, i.e. the slightest possible necessities; this meant a rebound from enjoyment, and from the pleasures of feeling. The negative is here the determining; later on this opposition of Cynics and Cyrenaics likewise appeared between Stoics and Epicureans. But the same negation which the Cynics made their principle, had already shown itself in the further development which the Cyrenaic philosophy had taken. The School of the Cynics had no scientific weight; it only constitutes an element which must necessarily appear in the knowledge of the universal, and which is that consciousness must know itself in its individuality, as free from all dependence on things and on enjoyment. To him who relies upon riches or enjoyment such dependence is in fact real consciousness, or his individuality is real existence. But the Cynics so enforced that negative moment that they placed freedom in actual renunciation of so-called superfluities; they only recognized this abstract unmoving independence, which did not concern itself with enjoyment or the interests of an ordinary life. But true freedom does not consist in flying from enjoyment and the occupations which have as their concern other men and other ends in life; but in the fact that consciousness, though involved in all reality, stands above it and is free from it.
[a. Antisthenes.]
Antisthenes, an Athenian and friend of Socrates, was the first who professed to be a Cynic. He lived at Athens, and taught in a gymnasium, called Cynosarges, and he was called the “simple dog” (ἁπλοκύων). His mother was Thracian, which was often made a reproach to him—a reproach which to us would be unmeaning. He replied that the mother of the gods was a Phrygian, and that the Athenians, who make so much of their being native born, are in no way nobler than the native fish and grasshoppers. He educated himself under Gorgias and Socrates, and went daily from the Piræus to the city to hear Socrates. He wrote several works, the titles of which Diogenes mentions, and, according to all accounts, was esteemed a highly cultivated and upright man.[167]
Antisthenes’ principles are simple, because the content of his teaching remains general; it is hence superfluous to say anything further about it. He gives general rules, which consist of such excellent maxims as that “virtue is self-sufficing, and requires nothing more than a Socratic strength of character. The good is excellent, the bad discreditable. Virtue consists of works, and does not require many reasons or theories. The end of man is a virtuous life. The wise man is contented with himself, for he possesses everything that others seem to possess. His own virtue satisfies him; he is at home all over the world. If he lacks fame, this is not to be regarded as an evil, but as a good,” &c.[168] We here, once more, have the tedious talk about the wise man, which by the Stoics, as also by the Epicureans, was even more spun out and made more tedious. In this ideal, where the determination of the subject is in question, its satisfaction is placed in simplifying its needs. But when Antisthenes says that virtue does not require reasons and theories, he forgets that he himself acquired, through the cultivation of mind, its independence and the power of renouncing all that men desire. We see directly that virtue has now obtained another signification; it no longer is unconscious virtue, like the simple virtue of a citizen of a free people, who fulfils his duties to fatherland, place, and family, as these relationships immediately require. The consciousness which has gone beyond itself must, in order to become Mind, now lay hold of and comprehend all reality, i.e. be conscious of it as its own. But conditions such as are called by names like innocence or beauty of soul, are childish conditions, which are certainly to be praised in their own place, but from which man, because he is rational, must come forth, in order to re-create himself from the sublated immediacy. The freedom and independence of the Cynics, however, which consists only in lessening to the utmost the burden imposed by wants, is abstract, because it, as negative in character, has really to be a mere renunciation. Concrete freedom consists in maintaining an indifferent attitude towards necessities, not avoiding them, but in their satisfaction remaining free, and abiding in morality and in participation in the moral life of man. Abstract freedom, on the contrary, surrenders its morality, because the individual withdraws into his subjectivity, and is consequently an element of immorality.
Yet Antisthenes bears a high place in this Cynical philosophy. But the attitude he adopted comes very near to that of rudeness, vulgarity of conduct and shamelessness; and later on Cynicism passed into such. Hence comes the continual mockery of, and the constant jokes against the Cynics; and it is only their individual manners and individual strength of character which makes them interesting. It is even told of Antisthenes that he began to attribute value to external poverty of life. Cynicism adopted a simple wardrobe—a thick stick of wild olive, a ragged double mantle without any under garment, which served as bed by night, a beggar’s sack for the food that was required, and a cup with which to draw water.[169] This was the costume with which these Cynics used to distinguish themselves. That on which they placed highest value was the simplification of their needs; it seems very plausible to say that this produces freedom. For needs are certainly dependence upon nature, and this is antagonistic to freedom of spirit; the reduction of that dependence to a minimum is thus an idea which commends itself. But at the same time this minimum is itself undetermined, and if such stress is laid on thus merely following nature, it follows that too great a value is set on the needs of nature and on the renunciation of others. This is what is also evident in the monastic principle. The negative likewise contains an affirmative bias towards what is renounced; and the renunciation and the importance of what is renounced is thus made too marked. Socrates hence declares the clothing of the Cynics to be vanity. For “when Antisthenes turned outside a hole in his cloak, Socrates said to him, I see thy vanity through the hole in thy cloak.”[170] Clothing is not a thing of rational import, but is regulated through needs that arise of themselves. In the North the clothing must be different from that in Central Africa; and in winter we do not wear cotton garments. Anything further is meaningless, and is left to chance and to opinion; in modern times, for instance, old-fashioned clothing had a meaning in relation to patriotism. The cut of my coat is decided by fashion, and the tailor sees to this; it is not my business to invent it, for mercifully others have done so for me. This dependence on custom and opinion is certainly better than were it to be on nature. But it is not essential that men should direct their understanding to this; indifference is the point of view which must reign, since the thing itself is undoubtedly perfectly indifferent. Men are proud that they can distinguish themselves in this, and try to make a fuss about it, but it is folly to set oneself against the fashion. In this matter I must hence not decide myself, nor may I draw it within the radius of my interests, but simply do what is expected of me.