undefined | Better HN

0 pointsRetric5y ago0 comments

Stoicism actually has roots in Cynicism. It’s unclear where individual ideas come from, but it’s actually possible Buddhism has some roots in western philosophy.

As reasoning creatures, people can gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which is natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, and fame. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(philosophy)

0 comments

4 comments · 1 top-level

bumby5y ago· 3 in thread

>it’s actually possible Buddhism has some roots in western philosophy.

I think the OP was implying it was the other way around. I.e., Cynicism (and thus Stoicism) draw from Buddhism. It seems like Siddhartha Gautama predates Antisthenes by nearly 150 years. (Granted, that doesn’t mean that ideas between them weren’t shared later, it just indicates which was started first)

RetricOP5y ago

I agree that’s what OP was saying, my point is it’s not the only way things could have happened.

First the dates aren’t that clear. Gautama Buddha was born between 563 BCE or 480 BCE. Antisthenes was born in 446 BC. So he’s between 38 and 117 years more recent, though they both lived to ~80, so it’s possible they where alive at the same time.

Anyway, it’s obvious similar ideas in different places where very contemporary to each other. What’s unclear is what these philosophers where culturally exposed to. Basically, we can’t trace which ideas they came up with and which ones they copied unless we find an older source, as such it’s impossible to say the origins of such things.

nemo5y ago

There definitely was interchange between various Greeks and Buddhists since Mahayana Buddhism's early development was in much contact with the Greeks from Hellenistic kingdoms in Bactria and India and some of those Greeks converted to Buddhism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhist_monasticism

Gandharan Buddhist art is steeped in Greek stylization and the first images of the Buddha followed Greek stylizations - early Buddhists didn't depict the Buddha at all, just symbols like empty footprints, it wasn't until Greek contact that this began.

Thomas McEvilley's _The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies_ has an interesting discussion of similarities between earlier Stoic texts by Sextus Empiricus and some works of Nagarjuna (one of the most important Mayahana philosophers) that use the same arguments, metaphors, and structuring. He goes over a number of other ancient sources, Greek and Indian, describing various sorts of cultural contact and interchange.

Pre-Hellenistic contact between the Greeks and India occurred but we can only speculate about it since there's no reliable evidence. After Alexander there was a lot of interchange and it had a big impact on Indian art, architecture, theater, and culture (as well as bringing significant influence of Indian stylization, philosophy, etc. on Greek Hellenistic kingdoms in Bactria and India).

nescioquid5y ago

That's interesting that they may have actually been contemporaries. You're right, the origination could have been the other way around, from some common source, or independently arose.

Amusingly, I first wondered about this while reading about Diogenese and later mendicant cynics.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse