The wise person

The centre of Antisthenes’ ethics is the wise person. Those who act with wisdom act in accordance with complete virtue, as seen when Antisthenes exploits the warning of Athena in Homer. The interpretation of Homer makes its contribution to ethics, since virtue and wisdom are two interconnected concepts. The wise want to live in conformity with virtue, and it is the wise who possess virtue. Moreover, virtue is teachable. Not only does his whole didactic practice depend on the teachability of virtue, but so too does the central concept of the wise person. If there was no teachability, there would be no wise man. Wisdom and virtue form a symbiotic unity. Furthermore, as previously noted, virtue once acquired cannot be lost: ‘Virtue is a weapon that cannot be taken away’.

This highly debated point is, in Antisthenes’ eyes, very important and he is explicitly reported to have adhered to this theory, as we have seen. I believe there is some absurdity in the idea that a wise person could lose his or her virtue, because then the person would stop being wise. In order to acquire the right insight the wise person does not need to use many different forms of reasoning, Antisthenes said, nor does it require a great deal of learning. It is all a question of practice – actions or deeds rather than words. On the other hand, the vicious require a lot of reasons. There is a slight contradiction here because Antisthenes elsewhere stresses the importance of reasoning. We are not told what kind of reasoning leads to virtue, although such thinking will have the force of walls. Walls [sc. of the centre] must be constructed in our own impregnable methods of reasoning. The centre where such methods of reasoning function is ‘wisdom’ (phronēsis), but we are not told according to what standards they are to be formed in this centre of the self, nor precisely how they are constructed.

The wise are self-sufficient and everything belongs to the wise, that is, they possess all the things they need. While they do not need others, they do recognize their fellows.