Most Famous Cynicism Philosophers

Cynicism is an ancient Greek philosophical movement traditionally founded by Antisthenes, a pupil of Socrates, and brought to its definitive form by Diogenes of Sinope in the fourth century BC. The Cynics held that the purpose of life is to live in agreement with nature, in rejection of social conventions, wealth, and the trappings of conventional respectability. Their characteristic mode was a confrontational asceticism intended to expose the folly of conventional values. Cynic ideas were later absorbed and softened by the Stoics. The English word cynicism derives from the Greek kunikos, meaning dog-like, after the Cynics' rejection of polite manners.

Philosophers in this tradition

Diogenes of Sinope c. 412 BC – 323 BC · Greek
Diogenes of Sinope was an ancient Greek philosopher and one of the founders of the Cynic school. After his exile from Sinope on the Black Sea coast he settled in Athens, where h...
Antisthenes c. 445 BC – c. 365 BC · Greek
Antisthenes of Athens was an ancient Greek philosopher of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, a student of Socrates and traditionally regarded as the founder of the Cynic school of ph...
Demonax c. 70 – c. 170 · Greek
Demonax was a Cypriot Cynic philosopher of the second century AD who lived for most of his long life in Athens. The biographer Lucian, his pupil, devoted to him a brief Life tha...
Bion of Borysthenes c. 325 BC – c. 250 BC · Greek
Bion of Borysthenes was a Greek philosopher of the third century BC, the son of a freedman and a courtesan, who reinvented the ancient diatribe as a vehicle of moral instruction...
Crates of Thebes 365 BC – 285 BC · Greek
Crates of Thebes was a Greek Cynic philosopher and the principal student of Diogenes of Sinope. Born wealthy, he gave away his property to his city and adopted the Cynic life of...
Demetrius the Cynic c. 10 AD – c. 80 AD · Greek
Demetrius the Cynic was a Greek philosopher of the first century AD and one of the most admired Cynics of the Roman period. Active in Rome and Greece, he was a close friend of S...
Menippus of Gadara c. 280 BC – c. 180 BC · Greek
Menippus of Gadara was a Greek Cynic philosopher and satirist of the third century BC, traditionally born a slave and later freed, whose mixed-genre satires of philosophical pre...
Oenomaus of Gadara c. 120 – c. 180 · Greek
Oenomaus of Gadara was a Greek Cynic philosopher of the second century AD, the author of a celebrated polemic against Greek and Roman oracles called The Charlatans Unmasked, of ...
Onesicritus c. 360 BC – c. 290 BC · Greek
Onesicritus of Astypalaea was a Greek Cynic philosopher of the late fourth century BC, a pupil of Diogenes of Sinope, who accompanied Alexander the Great on his Indian campaign ...
Peregrinus Proteus c. 95 – 165 · Greek
Peregrinus Proteus was a Greek Cynic philosopher of the second century AD, born in Parium on the Hellespont, who, according to the often hostile life by Lucian of Samosata, pass...
Teles of Megara c. 290 BC – c. 230 BC · Greek
Teles of Megara was a third-century-BC Greek Cynic philosopher, the earliest representative of the Cynic diatribe to survive in any substantial form. The Cynic Letters and the f...
Hipparchia of Maroneia c. 350 BC – c. 280 BC · Greek
Hipparchia of Maroneia was an ancient Greek Cynic philosopher of the late 4th and early 3rd centuries BC, one of the few women philosophers documented in the historical record f...