QuestionsWhat is happiness?Living according to nature with almost nothing: happiness lies in trained virtue, not in needs
What is happiness?Virtue and wisdom

Living according to nature with almost nothing: happiness lies in trained virtue, not in needs

Diogenes' Cynicism; the tub; "I am looking for a man"; citizen of the world

Diogenes of Sinope c. 412 BC · c. 323 BCHappiness comes from trained virtue and a life cut down to what nature asks, far from conventions and riches.
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What it claims

Happiness comes not from possessions or conventions, but from trained virtue: a life in line with nature, with as few needs as possible.

Why

Conventions make us want the superfluous and make us dependent; nature asks little, and training teaches us to live on little.

The same idea through history
Socrates400 BCThe Cynics claim Socrates, his chosen poverty and his indifference to others' opinions. Diogenes pushes this indifference to a life without house or possessions.
Diogenes of Sinope350 BCDiogenes of Sinope, according to tradition, lives in a tub in Athens, begs and mocks conventions. He left no certain work: everything comes from late accounts.
Seneca58The Stoics inherit from Cynicism the idea of living according to nature and of holding virtue to be sufficient. Seneca keeps the idea and refuses compulsory poverty (see his argument).
In short

"Living according to nature with almost nothing: happiness lies in trained virtue, not in needs" is an argument by Diogenes of Sinope (Diogenes Laertius, Lives VI, 20-81 (account of Diogenes, 4th c. BC), 350 BC) on the question "What is happiness?" (answer: virtue and wisdom). Its claim: Happiness comes not from possessions or conventions, but from trained virtue: a life in line with nature, with as few needs as possible. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives VI, 20-81 (account of Diogenes, 4th c. BC)
Valid with an implicit premise

Diogenes of Sinope, who lived in Athens in the fourth century BC, remains famous for his tub, his wallet and his insolent answers (to Alexander: "Stand out of my light"). Behind the anecdotes there is an argument about happiness. For Diogenes, we are unhappy because we chase things that conventions have taught us to want (wealth, honours, comfort) and that make us dependent on fortune. Nature, by contrast, asks little. Happiness therefore comes from a training (askesis) of body and mind to live on the minimum and depend on nothing. A warning about the source: we have no certain text by Diogenes; everything we quote is reported by Diogenes Laertius, who writes around 200-250 AD, six centuries later, from lost sources. We quote Hicks's translation (1925).

P1Men take useless pains: instead of those that nature recommends, which would make them happy, they choose to be miserable, out of madness.
P2To fortune one can oppose courage, to convention nature, to passion reason.
P3Nothing in life succeeds without strenuous practice, of body as of mind, and this practice can overcome anything.
P4One can cut one's needs down to what nature asks: a child drinking from his hands shows that a cup is unnecessary, and Diogenes throws his away.
P5 · implicit premiseTo be happy is not to depend on fortune, on others' opinions, or on needs one cannot meet oneself.
Therefore happiness comes not from possessions or conventions, but from trained virtue: a life in line with nature, with as few needs as possible.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, one can accept that artificial needs make us unhappy and that we can live on little, yet think happiness also needs ties, shared goods and a city. The Cynic would then be right about needs and wrong about the conclusion.
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P5. P1 to P4 say that conventions create unhappy needs, that nature is enough, that training lets one live on little and that this is possible; P5 defines happiness as independence. The debates concern P5 (is happiness independence, or also relationships and belonging?) and the human place in society.
Analogy. A walker who sets out with a twenty-kilo pack is at the mercy of the slightest slope. One who sets out with almost nothing can walk anywhere. Diogenes says life is like that: the less you carry, the freer you are.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Aristotle 330 BC · attacks premise 5

For Aristotle, man is by nature a political animal: he lives in a city because alone he is not self-sufficient, and speech lets him discuss the just and the unjust. One who cannot live in society, or who has no need of it because he is sufficient to himself, is no part of the city: he is a beast or a god. Living "according to nature" therefore cannot mean living outside the community.

Sinope replies
We have not yet found a direct reply by Sinope in the texts.
D
Diogenes Reported sayings, not directly linked to Aristotle
Asked where he came from, Diogenes answers that he is a "citizen of the world", and says the only true commonwealth is the one as wide as the universe. He does not therefore claim to be without a community: he rejects the particular city and its conventions.
E
Epictetus 108
In his Discourses (III, 22), Epictetus presents the true Cynic as a messenger sent to humankind: he has neither family nor public office, but he is "the father of all men" and cares for all. For Epictetus, Cynicism is therefore not a refusal of ties, but a way of serving all people while being free from everything.
The debate goes on (our summary) Aristotle, a contemporary of Diogenes, does not name him here, and Diogenes wrote nothing certain. The reported sayings (citizen of the world) show another idea of community, not an answer to Aristotle's argument.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Basic disagreement: is man's nature to be a citizen of a city (Aristotle) or to be free of any particular city (Diogenes)? The Cynics assert a wider community, the Aristotelians demand real institutions (our summary).
Cicero 44 BC · attacks premise 2

In On Duties, Cicero rejects the Cynics' whole system, which he finds hostile to modesty: without it nothing is upright or honourable. The Cynics, he says, mock those who hesitate to name certain things, but decency is part of what accords with human nature. To oppose nature to convention is therefore to be mistaken about nature.

Sinope replies
No reply possible: objection raised in -44, after the author's death (-323).
D
Diogenes Reported sayings, before Cicero
Diogenes made it his habit to do everything in public, the works of Demeter and of Aphrodite alike. His reasoning: if to breakfast is not absurd, neither is it absurd in the market-place. For him, what is natural has no need to hide, and it is convention that makes shameful what is not.
The debate goes on (our summary) Cicero writes three centuries after Diogenes; the reported sayings do not answer Cicero, but they show the principle he opposes. Diogenes Laertius' anecdotes are late and mixed with legend. The Cynic does not deny decency: he holds that it comes from habit, not from nature.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Basic disagreement: does what is judged shameful come from human nature (Cicero) or from custom (Diogenes)? The debate over nature and convention stays open between those who see modesty as a universal fact and those who see a variable norm (our summary).
Seneca 58 · attacks premise 1

Seneca, a Stoic, keeps the idea of living according to nature and of holding virtue to be what counts, but he refuses compulsory poverty: "no one has condemned wisdom to poverty". The wise man may own great honest wealth if he is not attached to it; it even gives him more occasions to exercise his virtues (generosity, temperance) than poverty does. It is therefore not having that makes us unhappy, but attachment.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 58, after the author's death (-323).
The debate goes on (our summary) Seneca does admire the Cynics: in the same treatise (18) he defends the Cynic Demetrius, poorer than the other Cynics, against those who still find him too rich; and elsewhere (On Tranquillity of Mind, 8) he says that to doubt the happiness of Diogenes would be to doubt that of the gods. The disagreement is therefore about the necessity of poverty, not about the value of virtue.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Disputed between heirs of the same idea: to be free from possessions must one give them up (Diogenes), or can one own them without depending on them (Seneca)? The Cynics think ownership breeds attachment; the Stoics, that attachment lies in judgement (our summary).