# CYNICS
The Cynics developed the negative attitude of the Socratics toward wealth to its extreme in asceticism. Their doctrine was subversive of all economic interest.
Antisthenes, the founder of the school, was a contemporary of Plato, a Sophist in his youth, but later associated with the Socratic circle. He appears prominently in the Symposium of Xenophon.915
He urged a return to nature in the literal sense.916 His book on the nature of animals (περὶ ζώων φύσεως) probably presented examples from the animal world as models for natural human living. Like many writers of his time and later, he idealized the life of primitive and barbarous peoples.917
In utter antithesis to Aristotle,918 he declared city life and civilization to be the source of all injustice, luxury, and corruption. In his opinion,