Socrates Explains Your Cynicism

Are cynicism, misanthropy, misogyny, and misandry due to misplaced trust?

What can Socrates tell us about the root causes of cynicism, misogyny, misandry, and misanthropy, in modern society? It turns out, in typically Socratic fashion, that his answer is to highlight a paradox.

By cynicism with a small c (never capitalized) I mean the modern concept of a negative attitude concerning other people’s motives. A cynic assumes the worst about their fellow human beings and says things like “People are only out for themselves.” That’s not to be confused with Cynicism, which is usually capitalized to denote the ancient Greek philosophy exemplified by Diogenes of Sinope, and his followers. The Cynic philosophers definitely appear cynical at times but there was much more to their philosophy than this, and their goal was to flourish and help improve their fellow citizens, not simply to complain about them.

Timon of Athens, the classic misanthrope

In one of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates briefly discusses the concept of misanthropy, a deep-seated distrust and even hatred of other humans. Misanthropy is like cynicism and some. Misanthropes don’t just distrust other people, they actively detest them. We can view misogyny, or hating women, and misandry, or hating men, as specialized forms of misanthropy, worth mentioning because arguably they’re more common, and more prominent, today than the more general attitude of simply detesting everyone.

The Phaedo depicts Socrates’ final hours in prison, before his execution. He contentedly discussed philosophy with a group of friends, focusing on questions about the nature of the soul and its fate after death.

At one point, however, Socrates tells Phaedo that if they wish to continue their discussion they must be on their guard against a danger. Phaedo is puzzled and asks him what he means.

The danger of becoming misologists or haters of reason, as people become misanthropists or haters of man. For no worse evil can happen to a man than to hate reason.

A misologist is someone who hates reason or rational argument, and by implication, philosophy.

Socrates is serious. He believes that there are many people who exhibit an aversion to logic or reason, and that this is among the worst afflictions that can befall us. For our purposes, though, it’s interesting to note that he considers this problem to originate in more or less the same way as misanthropy.

Misology and misanthropy arise from similar causes. For misanthropy arises from trusting someone implicitly without sufficient knowledge. You think the man is perfectly true and sound and trustworthy, and afterwards you find him base and false. Then you have the same experience with another person. By the time this has happened to a man a good many times, especially if it happens among those whom he might regard as his nearest and dearest friends, he ends by being in continual quarrels and by hating everybody and thinking there is nothing sound in anyone at all.

Ironically, then, we become cynical because we trust other people too much.

Socrates believes that our cynicism is spawned by our own misplaced trust and gullibility. When we naively place too much faith in the wrong people, we are bound to be let down by them eventually. If this happens repeatedly, and with people we care about, then we end up feeling that we can no longer trust anyone, and are left permanently bitter and cynical.

It’s even easier to see this if we narrow our focus and look at the example of misogyny. Suppose a young man falls in love with a woman, loses perspective, and falls into the trap of viewing her in a naive and idealistic way. If he falls for the wrong woman, she’s likely to end up rejecting, betraying, or otherwise disappointing him. If his feelings are hurt too often or too catastrophically, he may become bitter and cynical. In order to protect himself from making the same mistake again, and naively trusting the wrong woman, he will now tell himself that all women are untrustworthy.

This can happen to anyone, if they trust blindly in the wrong individual. It’s more often young people who react so strongly to rejection, because they have less experience to draw upon, in order to maintain perspective. Depending on whether your heart has been broken by a woman or a man, you may end up trying to protect your self-esteem by becoming either a misogynist or a misandrist — a pathological women-hater or man-hater.

Socrates goes on to explain that someone is only vulnerable to this sort of cynicism, if they lack a basic understanding of human nature.

Well, is it not disgraceful, and is it not plain that such a man undertakes to consort with men when he has no knowledge of human nature? For if he had knowledge when he dealt with them, he would think that the good and the bad are both very few and those between the two are very many, for that is the case.

Socrates thinks this is shameful because it is obviously quite childish. Children tend to think in more black-and-white terms than adults. As our thinking matures, we become more capable of fine distinctions.

When someone lacks a mature and balanced understanding of human nature they will tend to either idealize or demonize other people. They naively invest their trust in someone, idealizing them at first, only to discover that they are not perfect, at which point they may feel hurt and demonize them. They go from one extreme to the other. And if this happens too disastrously or too frequently, they may end up, misanthropically, demonizing everyone they meet. They think, perhaps without even realizing that it is what they think: that if they never trust anyone again, they will never again be disappointed.

Socrates notes that “big” and “small” are relative terms, and that, almost by definition, it is unusual to meet a very big person or a very small one, as most people are medium sized. In the same way, we should realize that it is unusual to meet a very good person or a very bad one, and that most people are in between, and capable of doing both good and bad things. A wise person, therefore, realizes that most people cannot be trusted unconditionally, at all times, and to assume otherwise would be childish and naive.

Socrates concludes by returning to his analogy, and explaining that misology, a pathological distrust of reason, can originate from gullibility in much the same that misanthropy does.

When a man without proper knowledge concerning arguments has confidence in the truth of an argument and afterwards thinks that it is false, whether it really is so or not, and this happens again and again; then you know, those men especially who have spent their time in disputation come to believe that they are the wisest of men and that they alone have discovered that there is nothing sound or sure in anything, whether argument or anything else, but all things go up and down, like the tide in the Euripus, and nothing is stable for any length of time.

In other words, people who are gullible and too easily persuaded by weak arguments, will usually end up disappointed when they discover, later, that they have been misled. If this happens repeatedly, they will end up feeling as though nothing is true, and that anything goes. Ironically, that makes them assume that they are wise and others are foolish, when, in fact, they have merely replaced philosophy, and the pursuit of wisdom, with cynicism.

Conclusion

It’s not clear who the misologists are, although it seems likely that Socrates may have had certain Sophists in mind. The first famous Sophist was Protagoras, who was known as the wisest man alive among his followers. Plato portrays him as a relativist, who doubts whether anything can be absolutely or objectively true. Protagoras and the Sophists who followed in his footsteps were more interested in using rhetoric to win arguments than in employing reason to arrive at the truth. Their wisdom, therefore, was all about appearance.

In modern society, it’s often been observed that many of those drawn to philosophy, looking for some sense of direction, are young men. In some cases, they seem to be turning to philosophy, looking for direction, and seeking a substitute for a father figure. They often feel very angry, disillusioned and cynical about the world. Sometimes they are preyed upon by “self-improvement” influencers, in the so-called manosphere, who exploit their sense of vulnerability concerning their masculinity in order to make money from them. (Andrew Tate, for instance, who has referred to himself as a “misogynist”, something in which he appears to revel.) Exactly the same thing used to happen in ancient Greece, and Socrates often warned young men to be on their guard against those who would take advantage of them in this way.

Cynicism and misanthropy are, basically, forms of anger. Clinical research on the psychology of anger has shown that in the vast majority of cases people become angry in response to initial feelings of hurt or anxiety. We usually get angry in order to conceal our pain and defend ourselves against having our feelings hurt again. The misogyny of these angry and desperate young men is perhaps a direct result, ironically, of their childishness and naivete with regard to women. They invest too much, emotionally, in the wrong people, and set themselves up for failure, and disillusionment. Indeed, by embracing misogyny and casting their lot in with gurus from the manosphere, they appear to be simply replacing their failed idealization of women with the irrational idealization of another male. That too may be doomed to end in disappointment, leading to yet more bitterness and cynicism.

Cynicism, misanthropy, misogyny, misandry, etc, offer us protection. If we never trust anyone again, we’ll never be disappointed by anyone again. Or at least, that’s what we assume. In reality, we make ourselves even more vulnerable by embracing this kind of pervasive negativity. Anger excels at achieving the opposite of what it desires. Angry people want others to respect them, but ultimately they alienate everyone, and destroy any hope of finding fulfilment in a lasting relationship. Marcus Aurelius said that, ironically, our own anger harms us more than the things about which we’re angry. Cynicism, likewise, does you more harm than the things about which you are cynical.