Cynics - Antisthenes

• Happiness is not found in external advantages such as wealth, power, etc
• Happiness is:
  • Wanting less, having more
  • Having control over life because you're completely independent
  • No one can take this happiness away because there is nothing to take
• Cynics are also called insensitive because they didn't want to bother themselves with other people's problems.

• Natural Law - the universal rightness. It governs all of mankind.
• There is only nature(monism); no separation of spirit and matter.
• They believed that everyone was part of the same common sense - logos
• Man must accept his destiny; sickness and death follows and unbreakable law of nature.
• Accept happiness and don't complain; everything happens out of necessity, not accidentaly.
• Stoic Calm - not letting things take over
• Invented the concept of humanism - the view that the individual is life's central force.

• Highest good is pleasure; the greatest evil is pain.
• Must weigh the pleasurable short term effects against the long term prospects of pain
• Seek the path with the most pleasure and live for the moment
• As long as we live, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.
• There was no fear of God.
• Carpe Diem!

• All that exists is God. Closest to God are the eternal ideas which are the primal forms of all creatures.
• The world is a span between two poles, divine light(God) and darkness
• darkness is non-existence, it is the lack of light
• The soul is illuminated by the light, but matter by itself within the darkness. All forms of nature have this glow of light.
• Reality is a bonfire
  • We are a spark from the fire
  • Closest to the fire are the "forms"
  • Furthest are earth, water and stone

• Mysticism is the merging with God
• Atheism is not believing in yourself and the splendor of one's soul
• Losing yourself in something bigger and greater. You become the God, the universe, and experience eternity.

  Hellenism Links

  Antisthenes - from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  Stoic Philosophy