Philip Bosman, "Imperial Cynicism: teleological vagueness, differing styles, class struggles, and the battle for relevance."

Talk Description: By far the largest part of the ancient body of evidence on the ancient Cynics stems from the early Roman empire. This does not mean that some material on the ancient Cynics is quite old (Diogenic and other literary fragments, earlier layers of the anecdote tradition, some references and possibly some Cynic letters), but that the testimonies could have been reworked, distorted, idealised or even imagined. For some this state of affairs does not constitute such a big problem, claiming that a recognisable picture of the ancient Cynic emerges from the material even so, and that a coherent reconstruction from the material should be considered legitimate. Others, however, propose that we should not claim more than working from the Cynic reception. In favour of the more cautious latter approach is the situation that the transmitted material allows more than one, and sometimes contrasting, pictures of what the early layers of the tradition suggest. An incoherent view of ‘the Cynic’ (ὁ κύων) translated into various kinds of Cynicism (κυνισμός) during the imperial age: hard vs soft; cultured vs uneducated, literary vs practising vs rhetorical, misanthropic vs philanthropic. Recently, Decker proposed that we may only speak of ‘normalisations’ of ancient Cynicism in authors such as Epictetus, but that the early layers of the tradition will always defy such appropriations, being at its heart a provocative stance rather than a coherent set of tenets arising from Socratic discourse. The perennial problem on whether ancient Cynicism was a real αἵρεσις (school, although of a special kind) or rather just a τρόπος/διαίτησις (way of life) remains unresolved. The 2nd century satirist Lucian of Samosata, an interesting figure operating with one foot in the tradition and the other in his contemporary world, may provide insight in how the ancients went about appropriating a complex tradition.

Short Bio: Philip R. Bosman is Professor of Classics at the Department of Ancient Studies, Stellenbosch University. He started his academic career in New Testament Studies at the University of South Africa (1990) and completed his doctoral studies at the University of Pretoria (1996). He lectured in the Department of Classics at Unisa for 24 years (1992-2016) and then moved to Stellenbosch University, where he is responsible for courses in Ancient Greek and Classical Cultures. He wrote a monograph on the evolution of conscience focussing on Philo and Paul, and edited a number of collected essays, most recently Intellectual and Empire in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Routledge 2019) and Ancient Philosophy and Early Christianity: Studies in Honor of Johan C. Thom (with G.R. Kotzé, Brill 2022). He wrote several articles on the Cynic tradition, but also on Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, Lucian and the emperor Julian. He is currently the principal investigator of a collaborative project (with the Universities of Ghent and the Western Cape) entitled Responsive Governance and Population Well-being in Late Antiquity.