[pt] O cinismo – entendido tanto em seu sentido antigo como uma escola filosófica helenística, quanto em seu sentido moderno como uma falsa consciência esclarecida – é o tema da presente tese. A partir da pergunta Como escrever uma história do cinismo?, pretendemos avaliar as condições de possibilidade e, ao mesmo tempo, propor uma tal história. Para dar conta dessa empreitada, lançamos mão da noção de dialética cínica. Em nosso capítulo inicial, apresentamos quatro momentos-chave da história do cinismo – personificados por Diógenes de Sínope, Luciano de Samósata, Jean-Jacques Rousseau/Denis Diderot e Friedrich Nietzsche. Em seguida, examinamos a historiografia recente sobre o tema, com foco nos trabalhos de Heinrich Niehues-Pröbsting, Peter Sloterdijk e Michel Foucault. Por fim, no último capítulo, refletimos sobre o que é e como se dá a dinâmica da dialética cínica. O nosso objetivo, depois de percorrido todo o texto, é deixar claro como o discurso cínico opera de forma dialética na medida em que ele sempre escorrega de sua própria definição. / [en] Cynicism – understood both in its ancient sense as a Hellenistic philosophical school, and in its modern sense as an enlightened false consciousness – is the subject of the present thesis. Starting with the question How to write a history of cynicism?, we intend to assess the conditions of possibility and, at the same time, propose such a history. To deal with this endeavour, we resorted to the notion of cynical dialectic. In our opening chapter, we present four key moments in the history of Cynicism – personified by Diogenes of Sinope, Lucian of Samosata, Jean-Jacques Rousseau/Denis Diderot and Friedrich Nietzsche. After that, we examine the recent historiography on the subject, focusing on the works of Heinrich Niehues-Probsting, Peter Sloterdijk and Michel Foucault. Finally, in the last chapter, we reflect on what the cynical dialectic is and how its dynamics works. Our objective, after going through the entire text, is to make clear how the cynical discourse operates in a dialectical way, inasmuch as it always slips away from its own definition.

Diogène de Sinope, principal représentant du cynisme ancien, affirme dans une de ses œuvres qu’« il mettait la liberté au-dessus de tout ». Il n’est pas question ici du sens politique de la liberté, mais plutôt de son acception morale et individuelle, dont les origines remontent au moins au VIe s. av. J.-C. et peut-être à la racine même du mot ἐλεύθερος. Retracer l’histoire de cette notion révèle diverses influences sur le cynisme, que ce soit la figure de l’« esclave libre » chez les tragiques, ou la correspondance entre nature et liberté chez les Sophistes et Démocrite. Pour atteindre l’autarcie et l’apathie, les deux caractéristiques de la liberté cynique, Diogène doit soumettre son corps à un entraînement de nature physique, seul moyen de s’émanciper des chaînes de la civilisation. Socrate, surtout chez Xénophon et dans une certaine mesure chez Platon, avait déjà fait des exercices corporels une condition d’acquisition de la liberté. Toutefois, l’émancipation de l’individu débouche avec Socrate sur l’apprentissage du savoir qu’il juge nécessaire à la vertu. Les Cyniques, quant à eux, rejettent la vertu-connaissance et limitent leur activité philosophique à la pratique d’une ascèse corporelle rigoureuse, de sorte que la liberté mène sans détour à la vertu et au bonheur au point de s’y identifier. Les Cyniques se différencient donc de leurs prédécesseurs socratiques en ne prolongeant pas leur quête philosophique au-delà du moment de la libération et, par le fait même, font de la liberté la véritable marque distinctive de leur philosophie. / Diogenes of Sinope, the main representative of ancient Cynicism, says in one of his works that « he preferred freedom above everything ». He does not mean here freedom in its political sense, but rather in its moral and individual meaning, which dates back at least to the sixth century BC and perhaps to the very root of the word ἐλεύθερος. Tracing the history of this notion reveals diverse influences on Cynicism, whether the figure of the « free slave » of the tragedians, or the correspondence between nature and freedom of the Sophists and Democritus. To reach self-sufficiency and apathy, the two characteristics of Cynic freedom, Diogenes must submit his body to physical training, it being the only way to break free from the chains of civilization. Socrates, especially in Xenophon and to a certain extent in Plato, had already made physical exercises a condition for acquiring freedom. However, with Socrates the emancipation of the individual ends in gaining knowledge that he deems necessary to virtue. Cynics, for their part, reject virtue-knowledge and limit their philosophical activity to the practice of a rigorous physical asceticism, so that freedom leads directly to virtue and happiness to the point of identifying with it. Therefore, Cynics differ from their Socratic predecessors by not extending their philosophical quest beyond the moment of liberation and thereby make freedom the true hallmark of their philosophy.

Le cynisme est un mouvement philosophique qui s’est développé en Grèce à partir du IVe s. av. J.-C. autour de Diogène de Sinope. La critique moderne a souvent vu dans ce mouvement l’expression d’un naturalisme radical, une doctrine fondée sur le refus des valeurs de la vie civilisée, qui par conséquent pourrait être définie comme une “croisade contre la civilisation” ou comme un “courant anti-prométhéen”, le “feu civilisateur” étant à l’origine des maux des hommes. La morale cynique consisterait ainsi dans la proposition d’un “retour à la nature” ou d’une vie “selon la nature” (kata phusin), guidée par l’idée d’animalité et de primitivisme, c’est-à-dire d’une vie inspirée par le comportement animal ou par le modus vivendi des premiers hommes. La présente thèse a pour but de soumettre à l’épreuve des textes qui nous ont été transmis par l’Antiquité cette interprétation largement répandue du cynisme. L’hypothèse avancée ici, qui s’appuie entre autres sur l’examen de deux textes – le Discours VI de Dion Chrysostome et le dialogue du Pseudo-Lucien intitulé Le cynique, – qu’on a confrontés à d’autres témoignages, comme le livre VI des Vies et doctrines des philosophes illustres de Diogène Laërce ou les lettres pseudépigraphes attribuées à Diogène de Sinope et à Cratès de Thèbes –, consiste à définir le cynisme comme la recherche d’une vie “selon la facilité” (kat’ euteleian) et la pensée diogénienne comme une forme radicale de pragmatisme, au sein de laquelle les dualismes – notamment celui qui oppose nomos et phusis – tendent à être supprimés au nom d’une morale déterminée selon les circonstances concrètes de la vie individuelle. / Cynicism is a philosophical movement which started in Greece in the 4th century B.C. around the figure of Diogenes of Sinope. Modern interpreters often understand this movement as the expression of a radical naturalism, a doctrine founded on a drastic refusal of all the values of civilized life and consequently defined as a “crusade against civilization” or as an “anti-promethean current”, identifying in the “civilizing fire” the very origin of all the troubles, vices and misfortunes that men have to cope with. Accordingly, Cynic ethics would advocate a “return to nature” or to a life “according to nature” (kata phusin), guided by the idea of animality and of primitivism, that is to say a life modeled on animal behavior or on the modus vivendi of the primitive men. The present thesis aims at questionning this widely spread interpretation of cynicism on the basis of an analysis of the texts transmitted by Antiquity. The alternative interpretation that we offer rests on the reading of two major texts: the Sixth Discourse by Dio Chrysostomus and the dialogue The Cynic transmitted under the authority of Lucian of Samosate, along with some other sources, like the sixth book of Lives and opinions of eminent philosophers written by Diogenes Laertius and the Letters attributed to Diogenes of Sinope and to Crates of Thebes. It redefines Cynic philosophy as the quest for a life “according to easiness” (kat’ euteleian) and — in modern terminology — as a radical form of pragmatism, within which dualisms – notably the one between nomos and phusis – tend to be abolished in the name of a morality conditioned by the actual circumstances of individual life.

A Sceptical Aesthetics of Existence: The Case of Michel Foucault Emmanouil Simos (Hughes Hall) Michel Foucault's genealogical investigations constitute a specific historical discourse that challenges the metaphysical hypostatisation of concepts and methodological approaches as unique devices for tracking metaphysically objective truths. Foucault's notion of aesthetics of existence, his elaboration of the ancient conceptualisation of ethics as an 'art of living' (a technē tou biou), along with a series of interconnected notions (such as the care of the self) that he developed in his later work, have a triple aspect. First, these notions are constitutive parts of his later genealogies of subjectivity. Second, they show that Foucault contemplates the possibility of understanding ethics differently, opposed to, for example, the traditional Kantian conceptualisation of morality: he envisages ethics in terms of self-fashioning, of aesthetic transformation, of turning one's life into a work of art. Third, Foucault employs these notions in self-referential way: they are considered to describe his own genealogical work. This thesis attempts to show two things. First, I defend the idea that the notion of aesthetics of existence was already present in a constitutive way from the beginning of his work, and, specifically, I argue that it can be traced in earlier moments of his work. Second, I defend the idea that this notion of aesthetics of existence is best understood in terms of the sceptical stance of Sextus Empiricus. It describes an ethics of critique of metaphysics that can be understood as a nominalist, contextualist, and particularist stance. The first chapter discusses Foucault's late genealogy of the subject. It formulates the interpretative framework within which Foucault's own conceptualisation of the aesthetics of existence can be understood as a sceptical stance, itself conceived as nominalist, contextualist and particularist. As the practice of an aesthetics of existence is not abstract and ahistorical but the engagement with the specific historical circumstances within which this practice is undertaken, the second chapter reconstructs the intellectual context from which Foucault's thought has emerged (Heidegger, Blanchot, and Nietzsche). The third chapter discusses representative examples of different periods of Foucault's thought -such as the "Introduction" to Binswanger's "Traum und Existenz" (1954), Histoire de la folie (1961), and Histoire de la sexualité I. La volonté de savoir (1976)- and shows in which way they constitute concrete instantiations of his sceptical aesthetics of existence. The thesis concludes with responses to a number of objections to the sceptical stance here defended.