Cynic Rhetoric: The Ethics and Tactics of Resistance, Kristen Kennedy.

Rhetoric Review,
vol. 18, no.1 (1999) pp. 26-45
26: Cynicism is tradition that offers the contemporary reader creative links with an ethical past
as well as important legacies of rhetorical tactics In the Cynics we find the possibilities of
rhetorical resistance as well as places from which speakers and writers who remain at the
margins can launch critique, those minority voices that get silenced under the monolith of
majority "conversation. The Cynic rejects decorum by adopting incivility as a means of
speaking out on issues of social and political importance to often unwilling audiences. Cynic
rhetoric stages kairotic moments when dissensus, rather than consensus, becomes the goal of the
speaker in imploring an audience to self-scrutiny and action. to understand the Cynics'
significance, we need to suspend our support for a rhetoric of reason and decorum and lend an
ear to the rhetorical possibilities of noise.
27: Positioned on the outskirts of culture, the Cynic parrhesiast -one who speaks openly and
at great risk-creates the space to speak out. Coupled with their emphasis on ethics and action,
Cynic tactics of parrhesia and diatribe have a transformative effect. Diogenes of Sinope is the
most famous embodiment of the ethical and rhetorical imperative to find a space on the "outside"
of the polis and speak out (of turn).
28: Diogenes (404-323 BCE) remains the most notable, and in many readings, the most
infamous Cynic Paracharattein: In its figural enactment, "reminting the coinage" became the
mantra of Diogenes and his followers as they attempted the transvaluation of values. Ciudadana:
exile in fourth-century BCE Greece meant that the privileges of citizenship -the right to vote
and to speak freely on politics-were stripped from the citizen. Notably, relatively few persons
held full citizenship in ancient Greece
29: This short cut could be accessed through action rather than philosophical doctrine.
Consequently, a second tenet of Cynic thought is the principle of action and living. The emphasis
on action, rather than dialectic and introspection, publicized an ethos of the individual, one that
was open to every weakness of hypocrisy. his "open admissions" policy toward philosophy
helped to democratize education to all who were interested, men and women alike. The Cynics
argued that wealth was a social evil. Diogenes positioned himself in antithesis to civic
conventions of democracy, a move that indirectly drew attention to the contradictions of
democracy that existed within the polis.
30: Politeia, armas, riqueza-pobreza, mujer: Diogenes's ideal state is one in which weapons
would be considered useless and coinage was to be abolished in favor of bone currency. the
Cynics were one of the few philosophical schools that allowed women to participate.
Furthermore, Diogenes's ideal community envisions the eradication of economic privilege and
the support of communal culture. His goals of economic and class emancipation struck right to
the root cause of basic inequity: to end inequality and alter the economy of exchange [segn
esto, Digenes era socialista]. Cosmopolitismo: the Cynics rejected traditional ideals of
allegiance to city-state by endorsing a cosmopolitanism reminiscent of the sophists. The Cynic
state was a state of being rather than a political unity organized by laws and public
deliberation. Cynics rejected social institutions because they were "an infringement of
individual freedom" (Moles 140). Self-sufficiency rather than allegiance to community.
32: his socially unacceptable behavior was the performance of philosophical doctrine by a man
we would generally consider quite sane. The Cynics used a wide range of rhetorical tactics in
their political practice. Parrhesia, diatribe, chreia, and parody are the predominant modes
employed in Cynic rhetoric. By engaging in the "rhetorical rights" available to only free born

male citizens (Flynn 103), the Cynics transgressed the limits of their assigned places in the polis
as exiles, articulating an identity of exile in the discursive act of speaking "out of place".
33: Parresia: Despite its multiple uses and changing contexts, parrhesia generally means
freedom of speech, the practice of frank and open discourse. Political parrhesia was the right
of every Athenian citizen; for the exile the loss of this right proved to be a painful exclusion from
democratic politics (Flynn 105)
34: Thus, the right of parrhesia becomes more and more valuable as the Greek world moved
from a democracy back to an autocracy in the Hellenistic period. While the study and use of
rhetoric did not wane during the Hellenistic period, the opportunities for deliberative rhetoric
were scarce (Kennedy81). With the rise of autocracy came the consequent decline of democratic
venues for rhetoric. Laertius' anecdotes about Diogenes show us parrhesia as a political
practice. The confrontation between Alexander and Diogenes is one memorable example of
the way in which telling the truth became a public refusal to stoop before Alexander's authority.
However, parrhesia was not only a political practice of freedom of speech; it was also an ethical
practice of speaking and living a true life. For the Cynics, the ethical and the political were not
discrete categories. That is, how one lived in private-and for the early Cynics, there was no such
thing-was not distinct from how one behaved in public. Thomas Flynn argues that with
Plato's influence democratic parrhesia gradually became more the property of philosophy
than a political right to speak. In the process the relationship between the ethical and the
political collapsed. For the Cynics, however, the public display of an ethical life created a
political statement on the inextricable link between the spheres of the public and the private
35: As Foucault suggests in his reading of the Republic (Book VIII), Platonic parrhesia took
on the cast of an ethical rather than political virtue, a process that invariably takes freedom of
speech out of the realm of public property to the private word of philosophy. By erecting this
dichotomy -between ethical and political parrhesia- Flynn identifies Platonic parrhesia as a
metaphysical pursuit, one that concerns itself with the soul. This split develops the association of
the ethical parrhesiast as a truth-teller, but one who is concerned with the confession of
philosophical truths, rather than, or in place of, the political.