consolations of anarchy

The Cyrenaics: the ultra-hedonists of ancient anarchism

Written by Federico Campagna, 22.10.2013
Featuring thinkers such as Theodoros ‘the Godless’, Hegesias ‘the Death-Persuader’ and Aristippos the Elder a.k.a. ‘the Royal Dog’, the Cyrenaics have always been the most vilified and neglected among the many philosophical schools of the Hellenistic age. Initiated almost informally by Aristippos the Elder, one of the companions of Socrates, the Cyrenaic school found its structure only two generations later at the hands of Aristippos’ grandchild, Aristippos the Younger. Unlike the majority of philosophical movements of the time, which sprung mostly in Athens or in the coastal part of modern Turkey, the Cyrenaics take their name from the North-Eastern area of today’s Libya. Perhaps because of their distance from the increasing dogmatism of Platonic/Aristotelian Greece, the Cyrenaics promoted a sophisticated form of ultra-hedonism which sounds remarkably free and audacious even to our postmodern ears.
 

Cynics: the radical atheism of the heavenly dogs

Written by Federico Campagna, 02.10.2013

Dressed in rags, if dressed at all, their heads half-shaved, eating, defecating and masturbating in public, ranting in the middle of the marketplace, the Cynics are among the most controversial figures of ancient Western philosophy. With a move that long predated the witty self-deprecation of groups like the Cubists or Afroamerican ‘nigga’ rappers, Cynic philosophers presented themselves as ‘dogs’ (kynoi) – and as such they behaved in public. By taking their place just under the bottom of the social order, the dog-philosophers simultaneously declared themselves to be above it: such was the most famous thinker of the early Cynic school, Diogenes the ‘son of Zeus’, the ‘heavenly dog’, the ‘king’. According to a famous anecdote, when Diogenes – who at some point was captured and sold as a slave – was asked by the trader in what he was proficient, he replied: ‘In ruling men’. Then he pointed to a rich man in the crowed and said.  ‘Sell me to this man; he needs a master.’[1]

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