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Eduardo Infante

.

Huelva, 1977. Graduated in Humanities, professor of Philosophy and author of the

international

bestseller

Philosophy in the street.

In his new book,

Don't cover the sun for me

(Ariel), he vindicates the thinking of the school of cynics.

The word "cynical" is used to define someone who acts falsely, who has a hidden face. Who were the cynics? The word "cynical" is perhaps the most misrepresented in the history of philosophy, because the current meaning has absolutely nothing to do with its original meaning. If we look in the dictionary of the Royal Academy, only in the third sense does it say that cynicism is a philosophical school of disciples of Socrates - I think they were the true disciples of Socrates - and that it was founded by Antisthenes, the most beloved disciple. by Socrates. Plato is Socrates' most famous disciple, but it was undoubtedly Antisthenes who preserved the Socratic legacy of absolutely committing life to truth and virtue. Because cynicism is fundamentally that:an ancient philosophy that was absolutely committed to truth and virtue.

And do the cynics of the past have something in common with those of today? The only thing they have in common is shamelessness. But there is a clear difference: the cynic from before was shameless, but he was so shameless precisely to practice virtue, to get out of the pack and above all, to tell the tyrant the truth to the face. The cynics of today, unfortunately, are shameless but to act in a totally individual and unjust way and to lie beautifully. Diogenes of Sinope, the most famous of the Cynical philosophers, was very shameless. The insolences that Plato dedicated to him are famous, right? Yes. Diogenes was perhaps the most shameless, the most aggressive dog, the most punk of all dogs. But everything he did, he did with a meaning. Diogenes used to carry out his countercultural and counterofficial criticism not so much with speech,but through a fine irony and also with a kind of "philosophical performance", that is, acting. And the one who gave the most trouble was undoubtedly Plato.

What antics did Diogenes set up for Plato? The most notorious took place on a certain occasion when Plato was in the Academy in front of all the sages, who flattered him as a great teacher, and he defined man as an impluous biped being. At that moment Diogenes left the Academy, went to get a rooster, plucked it, released it in the middle of the Academy and said to Plato: "Here is your man." That was precisely what made Plato not want to argue with Diogenes and treat him not as a real philosopher, but as a kind of clown. Plato could not bear the refutation that Diogenes continually made of that ideal world and of those eternal ideas to which Plato referred. In fact, on another occasion Diogenes appeared in broad daylight at the Agora with a lighted lantern and shouting: "I am looking for a man!"What he was looking for was that ideal man that Plato refers to, with a tremendous irony he was saying that the only thing that exists are concrete men of flesh and blood and that there is no such universal model of human being that Plato referred to. has referred to Diogenes as a dog, has said that he was "the most aggressive dog". What do cynics have to do with dogs? The word "cynical" comes from the Greek term "kynikós", which means something like a dog or related to the dog. And it is that the cynics chose the dog as their emblem, because they believed that dogs know how to live better than many people. We can say that the life of the cynic is a bitch life: a natural, simple, noble life, which does not know hypocrisy, nor fashions, nor social conventions, nor power, nor fame.Cynicism is a philosophical school for those who the more they know men, the more they love their dog. The dog is a totally countercultural animal, and also an animal that lives according to nature but in the city, in the city. And cynicism, unlike other philosophical schools, did not leave the city, but stayed in the city, doing politics, living together with others and inviting everyone to use reason. The dog teaches us to live according to nature, and the nature of the human being is rational. When cynicism invites us to live in a more wild, more natural way, it is inviting us to stop being domesticated and to start using reason as a natural device that human beings have to determine what is fair and unfair, what is good and what is wrong. the bad.It is about regaining reason in the face of gregarious behavior, daring to think for oneself, having a will of their own and overcoming this domestication of the herd. That's what the dog emblem means. Cynics, did they give up comforts and money?

Yes, definitely. The life of the cynic is an autarkic life, that is another of the things that they take as a model of the animal, because an animal has little enough to be happy. The cynic is more concerned with being than with having. The cynic invites us to recover that old Socratic question of what it means to live well, what does a good life mean. Because living well is not having a good time, we have seen that with the pandemic: when circumstances have changed and we have had to have a bad time, we have not been able to live well. The good life is not the comfortable life. Comfort, in fact, is paid; many times not with money but with loss of autonomy and exploitation in the world of work. And what is living well for a cynic? It is plain and simple to seek virtue at all times, to develop our human capacities. Virtue is, so to speak,the key that sets in motion the personal development of the human being. Happiness, for a cynic, has nothing to do with the satisfaction of desire. Furthermore, in a consumer society like ours, desire is never satisfied, desire is never satisfied. The cynic invites us to appease the desire, to nullify it and to control it. And once the desire has been appeased, it invites us to cultivate our humanity: to use leisure time, free time, as free men, that is, to use it to cultivate ourselves as human beings, to display all our humanity. That is the key. The important goods for the cynic are the internal goods. Material goods are not good things. Proof of this is that the cynics reached their fulfillment as human beings by leading austere lives, although they did not despise good wine for that.But they considered it something totally indifferent to happiness. I, like cynics, am totally convinced that we confuse external goods with internal ones. Having a good car does not make someone a good man at all. Identifying yourself with a car is as absurd as identifying yourself with a washing machine. Diogenes is famous for the anecdote he starred in with Alexander the Great. When he, seeing that he lived in absolute poverty, asked him if he could do something for him, the cynical philosopher blurted out: "Yes. Don't cover the sun for me." What does this event reveal? That was a true clash of kings, the clash between the tyrant and the philosopher. And it reveals two ideas of happiness and also two ideas of what is fullness and good. For the Greeks a king, a sovereign,it was the closest thing to a god and it was a model of happiness, because gods and kings were enough of themselves to be happy, they didn't need anything, they had everything. Diogenes, with his simple and austere life, with his control and self-control, needed absolutely nothing, he was someone who enjoyed his existence, who simply enjoyed sunbathing. And on the other hand we have the tyrant, Alexander, who also had an inner tyrant, was enslaved precisely because of his greed and his thirst for fame. The clash between the two shows that the true sovereign is precisely Diogenes. The tyrant, Alexander, rules over many men but he is incapable of governing himself, he is incapable of controlling his thirst, for fame and for wealth, something that many of us still have today. And instead the philosopher does not rule over anyone,but he governs his soul and knows neither master nor owner. This anecdote reveals that the true sovereign is Diogenes: because he has no needs, because he possesses himself, because he is pleased with what he has, because he finds in himself and not in external things the foundation of his happiness. cynical is so exalted, why has that current fallen into oblivion with the passage of time?

Because cynicism has always been the critical conscience of society; it has been the mirror in which society and, above all the powerful, have seen their contradictions, their stupidities and their corruptions reflected. Cynicism has not been a pleasant philosophy with power or a friend of tyrants, quite the contrary. And it has suffered misrepresentation and a damned memory. In ancient Greece, in ancient Rome, the enemies of the state, the enemies of power, were erased from their memory: inscriptions were erased, their statues were thrown into the river, an attempt was made to erase their history from books. names ... And that is a bit of what has been done against cynicism. Walter Benjamin used to say that history is written by the victors. And the history of philosophy, the history of thought and ideas, is also a history written by victors.And in this case the winner would be Plato, right?

Indeed. Alfred North Whitehead already said that famous phrase that "the entire history of Western thought is nothing more than footnotes to Plato's philosophy." Western thought has been an idealistic thought. And like that innocent child who told the truth and pointed to the king and assured: "The king is naked", the cynics dared to point out idealism, they said that this ideal world that Plato refers to, those utopias of which he spoke, they make us give up our freedom. When cynics question all that Plato's metaphysics, they are crushed and misrepresented.

You argue that we should go back to the philosophy of the cynics, that the heyday of cynicism in ancient Greece is quite similar to the one we are living in now. How are they alike? Cynicism flourished in a time very similar to ours, at a time of great economic, political and social crisis. In fact, Greece experienced a pandemic with Athens at the center of it. It was also a time of existential boredom, of loss of normality, of uncertainty. And the cynics taught these men to live sensibly, freely, and with dignity in a world that drifted adrift. I believe that today we also have the feeling that our world is adrift. We need a bit of cynicism to remind us of what the north of our existence should be and to regain the direction of our lives.We need more cynicism that teaches us to understand that what is really good, what is really worthy, are internal goods, those that no tyrant can take from us.

Foucault also vindicated the cynics, right?

Michel Foucault dedicated his last course at the Collège de France, when he knew he was dying, to cynicism, and I think that was his philosophical testament, he invited us to practice cynicism.

The title of that course I really liked when I discovered it, I called it

The Courage of Truth.

What I think Foucault was telling us, and I reclaim and vindicate, is that in a world like the one we live in, a post-truth world in all senses and in all areas, we need people who encourage us, who like Socrates goad us and that makes us understand the importance of our life both on a political level and on an individual level. We have to dare in community life to seek the truth and speak it. And personally we have to have the courage to live real lives, authentic lives, lives that are not a mere copy of what an

influencer

says. We have to look for authentic moral references rather than copy advertising campaigns. How would a cynic have reacted to the pandemic today?

The cynics worked hard on self-control, that is, power over oneself, over one's passions, one's own emotions, one's own desires, and one's own instincts. During the pandemic, there have been times when our wildest and most primal instincts have been unleashed in an outrageous way. We have behaved in a totally childish way many times. On the one hand there have been explosive emotional discharges that then came to nothing, like the applause. And on the other hand, fear was also unleashed and there were totally irrational and unfair behaviors. For example, the case of that nurse who suffered graffiti on her car by her neighbors comes to mind to make her leave, because they said she was infected. Now, when the fear is gone, those neighbors will have regained their sanity and will feel a tremendous shame,I wonder if they will be able to look at themselves in the mirror. And on the other hand, many people dedicated the time of confinement, that time of existential stoppage, to buying and consuming in an exorbitant and exacerbated way. I think the biggest winner during the pandemic has been Amazon. In fact, during confinement, one of the things that disturbed me the most was hearing many people say that they felt bored, even though this generation has all the technology designed to entertain us. I wondered what could be the cause of this existential boredom. And I think the key is that we avoid the conversation with ourselves, we are continually directing our consciousness outwards. And in that context, what would a cynic have done?Many people dedicated the time of confinement, that time of existential stoppage, to buying and consuming in an exorbitant and exacerbated way. I think the biggest winner during the pandemic has been Amazon. In fact, during confinement, one of the things that disturbed me the most was hearing many people say that they felt bored, even though this generation has all the technology designed to entertain us. I wondered what could be the cause of this existential boredom. And I think the key is that we avoid the conversation with ourselves, we are continually directing our consciousness outwards. And in that context, what would a cynic have done?Many people dedicated the time of confinement, that time of existential stoppage, to buying and consuming in an exorbitant and exacerbated way. I think the biggest winner during the pandemic has been Amazon. In fact, during confinement, one of the things that disturbed me the most was hearing many people say that they felt bored, even though this generation has all the technology designed to entertain us. I wondered what could be the cause of this existential boredom. And I think the key is that we avoid the conversation with ourselves, we are continually directing our consciousness outwards. And in that context, what would a cynic have done?I think the biggest winner during the pandemic has been Amazon. In fact, during confinement, one of the things that disturbed me the most was hearing many people say that they felt bored, even though this generation has all the technology designed to entertain us. I wondered what could be the cause of this existential boredom. And I think the key is that we avoid the conversation with ourselves, we are continually directing our consciousness outwards. And in that context, what would a cynic have done?I think the biggest winner during the pandemic has been Amazon. In fact, during confinement, one of the things that disturbed me the most was hearing many people say that they felt bored, even though this generation has all the technology designed to entertain us. I wondered what could be the cause of this existential boredom. And I think the key is that we avoid the conversation with ourselves, we are continually directing our consciousness outwards. And in that context, what would a cynic have done?I wondered what could be the cause of this existential boredom. And I think the key is that we avoid the conversation with ourselves, we are continually directing our consciousness outwards. And in that context, what would a cynic have done?I wondered what could be the cause of this existential boredom. And I think the key is that we avoid the conversation with ourselves, we are continually directing our consciousness outwards. And in that context, what would a cynic have done?

I think it basically would have reminded us that leisure time is not a time for entertainment, but a time to cultivate. Free time should be the time of the free man, and it should not be a time to be totally absorbed by the screen. I think the cynic would have bet, and I think he would continue to bet, on a certain disconnection, something totally countercultural today. And that disconnection, curiously, is to facilitate the meeting, a meeting that I think is essential. The pandemic has revealed that we have a lack of encounter with ourselves and of encounter with others. We don't find the time or the desire to talk to ourselves. And it is curious that although we are all the time "communicating" in the virtual world,when we suddenly go up in the elevator with a neighbor we are not able to speak. He has called the cynics countercultural. In his book he even compares them with the punks of the 70s ... Punk was a countercultural and counterofficial movement that invited people to savage life, at a time when politics, society and civilization had failed. Cynicism is countercultural in Socrates' sense: it examines culture, examines majority opinion, examines official tradition, and accepts only that which is just, noble, virtuous, and honorable. Any rule, any fashion, any tradition, any opinion, no matter how majority, if it is unfair, immoral, not virtuous, stupid or irrational, it must be violated. The cynic is not a rebel without a cause, he is a rebel with a cause,and the cause of the cynic is justice, liberty, and virtue. The cynic does not break the norm as a teenager, to be contrary, because yes, that is to be stupid and rude. The cynic invites us to stop and ask ourselves if what I am going to say or do is the best I can say or the best I can do. That is the key to cynicism. The Stoics are the children of the Cynics, a version, let's say more sweetened, more decaffeinated. And yet they triumphed over the cynics.The Stoics are the children of the Cynics, a version, let's say more sweetened, more decaffeinated. And yet they triumphed over the cynics.The Stoics are the children of the Cynics, a version, let's say more sweetened, more decaffeinated. And yet they triumphed over the cynics.

Stoicism was founded by a cynic, but Stoicism is the politically correct version of cynicism. The Stoics eliminated what is known as "parrhesia": courage, the virtue of telling the truth to the powerful, even if they do not want to hear it and have the courage to denounce injustice. Stoicism was more likely not to seek trouble with power, and indeed many Stoics were friends of power or wielded power. The position that the philosopher should occupy in the city, the relationship of the philosopher with power, is a great debate. And what did the cynics answer to that? Well, just the opposite of Plato. For Plato the philosopher has to occupy power. I say that the cynics are the true disciples of Socrates because one of the things that was most blamed on Socrates is that he had not practiced politics.Socrates, with his irony, used to say that he had not practiced politics because since childhood an inner voice told him not to do dishonest things. And that was also said at his trial, where he also said that he had not exercised politics because if he had, they would have killed him. But, irony aside, Socrates also says that the philosopher, in order to be the mirror in which society looks at itself, in order to be that voice of conscience that is continually reminding us that it is right and wrong, needs to be outside of politics. And that's what the cynics did. The function of the cynical philosopher is that of an observer who analyzes and educates the citizen. And do you consider yourself a cynic, do you place yourself within that philosophical current? Yes.The thing is that maybe I don't have enough courage - although I would like to have it and I am working on it - to be able to put all the principles of the cynics into practice. It must not be easy to live like a cynic. Diogenes lived for example in a barrel.

.

Yes. But I think it is important to have cynics in our life, to have cynics in our society, people who knock us out, question us and force us to examine our lives to ask ourselves if the way we are living is the best way to live. , people who remind us of the true core of life. A cynic, without a doubt, was Francisco de Asís. And another cynic for me was Thoreau. Thoreau went to Lake Walden to discover what it is to survive in direct contact with nature, to discover that authentic detachment from everything and what makes a life worth living. These men and their experiences are important as beacons, as guides, and as orientations. We may not all have the courage to be one hundred percent cynical, but I do believe that we need cynics in our lives.The cynic for me is a philosophical hero, and not all of us have an obligation to be heroes. No one can be required to be a hero, but we are in need of heroes, moral heroes.

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