Cynicism was a predominant practical philosophy, i.e. ethics, of ancient Greece for over 1000 years.
It can be counted, together with Plato and Aristotle, among the virtue ethics, in which the question of ethics was not what is “good or evil”, but rather (with Nietzsche): what is good or bad, “poor” — namely for me. Ethics answered, one can almost say until Kant, the question of how I can achieve a good life. A good life, that was synonymous with a lucky and happy life. So the schools of ethics, up to Kant, had happiness as their goal, not sad performance of their duties, with the goal of not being evil.
The great peculiarity of cynicism is that it knows only one virtue, parrhesia. This absolute commitment to self-realization owes itself to the equally absolute affirmation of the divine nature.
Despite patriarchy and Christianity, this love for God and for Mother Earth persisted into modern times. Only the earthquake of Lisbon on November 1, 1755 expressed how far European culture had fallen away from faith in the meantime.The representatives of this change of times, which they now initiated, called this change into darkness Enlightenment. Finally Kant could condemn the earth as “kingdom of darkness”. From then until today, it was finally considered “ethical” not to be evil, to do one’s duty. While virtue ethics is still mentioned in lectures for prospective philosophers, thus in many introductory courses not only the then so much important cynicism, but also its daughter, the Stoa, is treated stepmotherly, if at all.
What can one do with an ethics that knows only one virtue?
Now it is true that parrhesia is the only virtue of the Cynics. But from the claim of the self-realization further consequences derive necessarily. For example quite the cardianal virtues of the Stoics or Platon or Aristoteles. However — and this is important — they are not seen isolated as a virtue, but always only in relation to parrhesia.
An “auxiliary virtue” already formulated by the first Cynics is the revaluation of all values.
Another important auxiliary virtue that this text is about is aggression.
Live Dangerously!
In this topic, again, we immediately recognize Nietzsche, who, although he once referred to himself only as the “last Stoic,” as the last famous Cynic to date, and indeed as one who aggressively worked on ancient Cynicism, chewed it, not swallowed it whole.
For – believe me -the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is -to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors. 1One can object that Nietzsche meant the dangerous life purely epistemologically, related to cognition. But in his posthumous works there are similar statements, which make clear that here he definitely demands the virtue of aggressiveness
Nietzsche. The Gay Science
Nonviolence? — No thanks! Save the aggression!
Gemäß dem liberalen Grundsatz endet Freiheit bei der Freiheit des anderen. Ich darf tun, was ich will, solange es niemanden stört. Alles andere wäre übergriffig und damit bereits gewalttätig. Im Westen ist heute Erziehung zur Gewaltfreiheit herrschende Norm. Aggression ist ein Tabu.
Um über Aggression und über Gewalt jenseits dieses Zeitgeistes zu reden, ist es zunächst sinnvoll die Herkunft von diesen Begriffen zu klären.
The term violent derives from lat. violentus, this from vis = strengh and olentus = full of, abounding in.
So originally, violent only means that someone is very strong.
Aggression comes from the Latin aggredi, and originally also meant to simply go up to someone, to undertake something.
We see here again clearly the dirty business of slave morality in action, as Nietzsche pointed out: The slave is afraid of the strong, so he is evil, simply because he is strong. Even more so, if he also shows his strength, it is clear that this can only be evil.
If in the meantime, following the MeToo movement, every romantic relationship is rejected in which there is a power imbalance; this shows the development. He who is strong is evil, he must not love a weaker person under any circumstances, because he would naturally bring his strength into the relationship, of course, to harm the weaker person.
Gestalt therapy in decline
Laura Perls, the actual author behind the book that her husband supposedly wrote and which is the first document of Gestalt therapy, called her book “Ego, Hunger and Aggression”
She shows in her text, which by the way can be borrowed free of charge via the link I have inserted ausführlich die wichtige Funktion von Aggression.
Paul Goodman, who wrote the theory section in what became the standard work of Gestalt therapy, later demonstrated the important distinction between natural and perverse aggression in his best-selling book Growing up Absurd: Natural aggression is tied to the natural self; it has a healthy function. I have to chew to eat, I vomit into the hall when I find a politician’s speech disgusting, etc. Perverted violence, on the other hand, is a senseless discharge without function or goal.
Unfortunately, in the meantime, at least in Germany, Gestalt therapy has largely distanced itself from its original values and methods and adapted to the zeitgeist of non-aggression. There are still warnings of this development, such as from the anarchist and Gestalt theorist Stefan Blankertz, who wrote the book “Verteidigung der Aggression” (“Defense of Aggression”) on this topic. To my knowledge, this book is unfortunately only available in German and only in paper form, thus no simple translation is possible for English speakers with tools such as Google or Deepl.
The political consequences: when conchies call for total war
The ideology of total non-violence can quickly turn into exactly the irrational rage that Paul Goodman speaks of. It is the dream of a very questionable paradise in which everyone loves each other, no one eats meat anymore, and all aggression is a thing of the past. In Germany, pistols, which we were allowed to play with as children, are now forbidden under the weapons law. If two little boys fight in the schoolyard, the psychological service, if not the police and the youth welfare office, are immediately called in. Whereas the so-called “kiss in honor” was once not an offense worthy of punishment, today it would be prosecuted as illegal border crossing, almost as incipient rape. Parents who give their child a slap in the face must fear that they will be deprived of custody. Those who cannot sit still are given Ritalin. (Here in Kenya I know a girl with corresponding symptoms. After her first year at school, these symptoms had almost completely disappeared. In the meantime I can let her into our house without having to fear that she will knock something over every 10 minutes etc. I think this is a consequence of the rather strict school discipline. In Germany, too, the teachers used to be able to get the children to stop fidgeting by being strict enough. Such strictness is now unthinkable. We prefer to give children amphetamines to keep them quiet.
Those born around 1970, often already raised non-violently, are grateful victims of the current war propaganda. While they were recently against any violence, for total disarmament, for “peace without weapons”, they now demand weapons for an all-out war against the “evil aggressor Putin”, which “we” must win at all costs. They categorically reject diplomatic talks with a so evil Country like Russia. I see in this precisely the irrational outbreak of insane senseless violence that Goodman also speaks of. It is only a small leap from total rejection of all aggression to shouting for total war.
II experienced this over and over again as a social worker when I spent my first 6 professional years working in a children’s home for children who were difficult to raise. Of course, this attribution has long since become obsolete. The young educators and social workers thought that you just had to be nice and cuddly, then the children’s “disturbances” would immediately vanish into thin air. Although I was almost the only social worker in the children’s home whom the children and young people trusted, whom they confided in and whom they loved, just as I loved them and took them seriously, I was regularly accused of being too authoritarian in my dealings with the children. And it repeated itself again and again. After a few weeks, these do-gooders changed from total cuddling to total war with the children. Most of the time they identified ringleaders and suggested that they should immediately be either in a closed psychiatric ward or in a closed home, they were intolerably aggressive. Regularly, they either gave up and quit or they now met the children with rejection and perfidious often hidden use of violence. In the worst case, the suppression of aggression leads to spree killers, to young people who hate all teachers, all educators — and themselves. Politically, the snowflakes in Germany are currently turning into hawks.
The Cynic attachment of aggression to parrhesia
As Goodman correctly noted, healthy aggression is tied to goals, values, functions.
Unlike Plato, Aristotle and the following, the Cynic movement is known to have only the one virtue: parrhesia. Whereas Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics seeks to tame each of the listed virtues by distinguishing in each case a middle action from two disfunctional extremes, such as generosity from greed and wastfulness, etc., Cynic ethics can dispense with such modifications. We Cynics unreservedly profess aggression without imposing artificial barriers on it, since it is bound to parrhesia. Gestalt therapy once knew how important the healthy acting out of aggression is, not least because it prevents completely senseless outbreaks of violence, whether rape or mass murder in schools. It is not a ban on weapons that can put an end to the spree killers in schools, but on the contrary an affirmation of natural aggression. It is also the first aid against depression, which is nothing else than a perverted aggression directed against oneself. Diogenes, the famous Cynic was known for actions that today would be considered assaultive, aggressive, insulting, unacceptable. But he was equally known for his serenity. For example, when a slave ran away from him, he did not go berserk, although a slave was at that time as expensive as a villa, but only said: “Obviously the slave thinks that he can do without me. Why should I not get along just as well without the slave.” The “stoic serenity”, which is mostly attributed to the Stoics, results automatically from the aggressiveness-affirming parrhesia-practicing way of life of the Cynics.
By the way, the cover picture shows a seagull hating an owl. Hate originally meant to chase away. The seagull hates the owl, for example, to protect its young. Also, hating was once nothing at all reprehensible, while the author, for example, is blocked on Facebook every few weeks for alleged “hate texts”.
- 1One can object that Nietzsche meant the dangerous life purely epistemologically, related to cognition. But in his posthumous works there are similar statements, which make clear that here he definitely demands the virtue of aggressiveness