The Cynics and Comedy as A Philosophical Life

The Cynics are forgotten philosophers who were discredited as mere clowns because of their way of life that defied most of what everday Athenians considered common sense, natural law and tradition. This talk tries to examine the lives of famous Cynics like Diogenes, Crates and Hipparchia and to defend their ideas and way of life as a serious philosophical life. The Cynics held dearly the ideas of Socrates and targeted the subversion of the Athenian society’s most common and undoubted conventional system of ideas through their comedian way of life.