The Object of the Cynic was Happiness

The πονοι of the Cynics were hunger, cold, thirst, beatings, torture, exile and disrepute (Dio Chrysostom 8, 16 & 28). A great virtue for the Cynic was καρτερια, derived from a word meaning "strength" and perhaps originally having a similar meaning, but applied by the Cynics to the hardihood or ruggedness necessary to endure the Cynic life. The endurance of these hardships was a virtue; avoidance of them by foresight, industry and compliance with social conventions was μαλακία (softness or effeminacy), the vice which the Cynics denounced most frequently and vigorously.

The object of the Cynic was happiness and the most important condition for its attainment was ἐλευθερία (freedom). D. L. speaks of Diogenes as "allowing convention no such authority as he allowed to natural right, and asserting that the manner of life he lived was the same as that of Hercules when he preferred freedom to everything" (6, 71). The Cynics extended the meaning of freedom, a word which was generally applied to the distinction between a citizen and a slave, or to the right of a democracy to govern itself and to the sovereignty of states. They applied it to the freedom of temperate men from domination by appetites and desires, as is explained by Philo Alexandrinus: "We may fairly enough laugh at those men who, when once they have got released from the actual possession of an owner, think themselves free from that moment; for these men… are all slaves, obeying not indeed men (for that would not be so terrible), but even the most dishonored of inanimate things- strong wine, vegetables, cheese cakes and all the other things which the superfluous labors of bakers and confectioners invent, as enemies of the miserable belly. Accordingly Diogenes… said, 'It is just as if any one were to proclaim that one of his servants was, from this day forth, to be accounted a good grammarian, a geometrician or musician without his having the slightest idea of the art'" (Quod omnis probus liber sit 21). Freedom in this sense was obtained through the extinction of desires.

Image: Philo of Alexandria by Andre Thevet
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