The Philosophy of Antisthenes as Therapy in Xenophon’s Symposium

Abstract

This paper shows the philosophy of Antisthenes of Athens described in Xenophon’s Symposium as a philosophical therapy closely connected with the Socrates’ model also presented in Xenophon’s writings. Antisthenes developed the basic concepts of Socrates’ ethics, like arete, enkrateia, eleutheria and autarkia, giving them a specific radical dimension. This decisive radicalization was Antisthenes’s reaction to the then deep moral crisis which, like his master, he tried to remedy by offering the only proper medicine – philosophy. It was, above all, a practical philosophy that showed a man how to live in order to be able to call his existence, following Socrates, “a life worth living”. The philosophical thought of Antisthenes presented in Xenophon’s Symposium is a peculiar therapy of human souls, and the philosopher himself can therefore be described as a “physician of the soul” (iatros psyches). Since Antisthenes perfectly recognized the state of a special kind of intoxication deeply embedded in society and its addiction to inborn impulses and instincts, as well as attachment to irrational traditions and customs, and his treatment, with the help of philosophy, boiled down to a thorough return to rationality, rejection of excessive bodily desires, and continuous shaping of one’s own personality through work on oneself and practicing virtue.