Thinker · c. 445–365 BCE
Antisthenes
Antisthenes made virtue, self-sufficiency, and hard practical training central to a Socratic ethical project that later writers linked with Cynicism.
Intellectual setting
His exact place in the genealogy of Cynicism is contested because the evidence is late and refracted through later school narratives.
Key ideas
Virtue and training
Virtue is teachable through disciplined practice and is sufficient for happiness without conventional status or luxury.
Critique of convention
His reported positions challenge prestige, inherited rank, and elaborate theoretical definitions in favor of lived ethical clarity.
Legacy
Antisthenes anchors the Cynic claim that Socratic ethics can be enacted as a deliberately independent way of life.