Antisthenes

Antisthenes , b. 444? BC, d. after 371 BC, Greek philosopher, founder of the Cynics . Most of his paradoxical views stemmed from his early Sophist orientation, even though he became one of Socrates' most ardent followers. He believed that man's happiness lay in cultivating virtue for its own sake. To attain virtue, man must reduce his dependence on the external world to a minimum, disregard social convention, shun pleasure, and live in poverty. Antisthenes, like Xenophanes, repudiated polytheism, substituting one god, whom he described as unlike anything known to man. His view that each individual is unique had implications for ethics and for a theory of knowledge.

Cynic a member of a school of ancient Greek philosophers founded by Antisthenes, marked by an ostentatious contempt for ease and pleasure. The movement flourished in the 3rd century bc and revived in the 1st century ad.

The name is recorded in English from the mid 16th century, and comes via Latin cynicus, from Greek kunikos. It probably comes originally from Kunosarges, the name of a gymnasium where Antisthenes taught, but was popularly taken to mean ‘doglike, churlish’, from the nickname (Kōn ‘the dog’) for Diogenes, the most famous of the Cynics.