In defense of a Direct Personal Relationship between the "Dogs" Antisthenes and Diogenes: a Tense History of Agreements and Disagreements

Abstract

Historians tend nowadays to interpret Antisthenes’ ethics as a purely theoretical appendix to the refl ections on the logos led by this philosopher within the scope of Socratic dialectic, as a chapter that played no role whatsoever in the actual origin of cynicism. The present paper aims at questioning, through an in-depth enquiry, the socalled basis of such an idea as being biased and arbitrary, as well as the point of view of those who consider that Antisthenes have been affi liated by the ancients to cynicism as the result of an interpretatio cynica of the data, without having himself subscribed to such a perspective, and who deny the possibility of a direct perso nal link between Antisthenes and Diogenes, while acknowledging unquestionable doctrinal similarities, unanimously attested in ancient tradition. There is no evidence, of a numismatic order or of any other kind, that contradicts the informations provided by the ancient authors and their testimony explain very well the origins of cynicism out of the Socratic movement, as well as the tensions that naturally took place right from the beginning between Cynics (as they did between other Socratics).