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What’s the Difference Between Scepticism and Cynicism?

by James Alexander
4 December 2024 7:00 PM

When I was a student, I found the names of the Hellenistic philosophers beguiling: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics and Cynics. I suppose I put Stoics and Epicureans into a boring bracket, to be taken out later, if necessary. (Scholars still engage in amusing dispute about whether this or that 18th century thinker was a Stoic, or an Epicurean, or both, or neither.) But the words “Sceptic” and “Cynic” were great: both ordinary words in English for someone with critical insight, and yet also Greek words for philosophical schools. When I went to Athens aged 19 I had enough money to buy only one statuette of a Greek philosopher. I ignored Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and bought Diogenes – the philosopher I increasingly resemble in body – Diogenes the Cynic.

I read Russell’s History of Western Philosophy at the time, but, for some reason, it has required decades of turning and returning to these subjects to acquire my own sense of what distinguishes sceptic from cynic. I doubt I would have recognised the name of Pyrrho or that of Sextus Empiricus, the great Sceptics, when I was young. It was 20 years before I had reason to think seriously about scepticism. Now the way I think about it is this.

Scepticism is what we might call a hermeneutic, a critical trick. It requires us to do something very simple, which is to doubt everything one hears on the basis that the opposite might be true. Someone says: here is a hypothesis. Some scientists have found evidence for it. (Paid to do so, probably.) So we say: Go and find an equal and opposite hypothesis. (And pay someone to find evidence for it.) The Greek Sceptics were the philosophers who found, again and again, that everything questionable could only be as true as it was untrue, or as true as its opposite was true. They did not disdain the search for truth: they refused to be dogmatically sceptical, in the sense of rejecting every hypothesis. On the contrary, they considered every hypothesis, also its opposite. At one level, they were irritating casuists – and, for this, read Sextus Empiricus. But at another level they sought ataraxia, or tranquility: and they thought this came from not believing in the rubbish told to them by scholars, experts, busybodies, SAGE.

Scepticism is very useful. But no one can be a sceptic universally, except as a sort of dandy display of independence: going down every rabbit hole just for fun. Most sceptics, in practice, have been reasonably practical men of the world, like Montaigne, or Hume, or Oakeshott, who tried not to concern themselves too much with the world, just enough, and otherwise spent their time on Plutarch (that’s Montaigne), or chafing dishes of spices and roast dinners (that’s Hume), or chasing women (that’s Oakeshott). They tried not to get too involved in politics. But it is with politics that cynicism comes in.

Cynicism was originally a much simpler sort of philosophy: a philosophy of enacted opposition. This was not about handling propositions in calm and playful equal-and-opposite manner, but, on the contrary, going around forcing people to face the arbitrariness of their goings-on by going on in a different way: hence Diogenes with his provocations: living in a tub, propositioning statues, eating raw fish to distract audiences from a boring sermon. One of Diogenes’s followers went so far as to burst into people’s houses to tell the occupants that they were living unnaturally.

But here is the clear difference.

Scepticism is not directly about politics.

Cynicism is directly about politics.

We are sceptical about beliefs, about what people believe. This is not directly political, since we take things at face value.

But we are cynical about assertions, about what people want us to think they believe; and about acts, about how people behave. This is directly political, since we think there is something going on behind what we see.

Beliefs and behaviour are different. Beliefs are, we assume, sincere. Now, one may hold beliefs insincerely, or pretend to hold them. But as soon as do this we have abandoned scepticism and entered the world where cynicism applies: exactly because we have subordinated belief to behaviour, and twisted belief for some behavioural advantage. We have become political.

So, behind, or below, scepticism is cynicism.

Cynicism is especially necessary for assessing politics.

I was fortunate in having as one of my teachers a great man. This was Maurice Cowling, the Cambridge historian. Years ago I bought a copy of an obscure interview he made for the Institute of Historical research, and by accident decided to watch it again a few days ago. In this interview he said something which reminded me of some of the things I have been trying to say in recent articles for the Daily Sceptic.

Cowling wrote books on politics, ‘high politics’, as it was called: the politics of the Westminster elite. He wrote books on Disraeli and Gladstone in the 1860s, Labour in the 1920s and the British response to Hitler in the 1930s. In the interview he said that there were two things he had wanted to say about politics in those books. One is that no one knows the future, so the historian has to overcome hindsight and indicate the structure of the situation as it actually was: as a situation in which a limited number of groups agitated for power in the face of certain predicaments. The other thing is more about politics than about history. He said:

Democratic politics are not really ever what they seem. That there is usually some other purpose, or some other intention, involved in the democratic politician’s actions, than appears on the face of it. It is not corrupt. It is simply the way in which democratic politics works, because a democratic politician has not only to make decisions, he has also to make decisions in the light of the wishes and ambitions of other politicians, and he also has to justify himself to a public which doesn’t necessarily like the language which would describe the reasons for his actions. A democratic republic on the whole prefers a comfortable, liberal, problemless language, except from time to time. And democratic politicians, in order to keep power, in order to recommend themselves to the public, have to speak in a language the public wants. Now, it isn’t always, or only, liberal and comforting language. Sometimes it is challenging language, sometimes it’s reactionary, sometimes it’s nationalistic language. But the tone of English politics is liberal, even when the politician is not really himself in his private action thinking liberally. He is thinking either about how you present a policy to the public, or he’s thinking about rivals within the political system, or friends within the political system.

And he called this view of politics cynical.

I’m partly a cynic, partly a pessimist, and partly, I think, if I can use jargon which isn’t really mine, a deconstructionist. What I’m saying is that you cannot understand democratic politics by looking at the surface, by looking at the rhetoric, by looking at what politicians say… Democratic politicians are only understandable within a cynical framework.

What he was saying is what I find I have been saying in slightly different terms recently, which is that politics in modern times is necessarily conducted at two levels, or in two languages. There is a language internal to politics: the language of private disclosure, the language in which things are done. And there is the language of public disclosure, the language in which things are displayed to the public. As Cowling says, “This is not corrupt.” It is not corrupt because it is a necessary feature of the system.

Cynicism is the only way to understand politics. But it forgives the politicians for what they do. We may even forgive politicians for what they say. But there are limits to cynicism. Cynicism would have allowed us to tolerate Covid and other assorted political songs. (Co-vid! It’s got me in my mask!) By being sceptical about the Covid claims we were perhaps forced to be naïve about politics, and take political utterances at face value: but this was because politicians had come to use the language of ‘truth’ and ‘evidence’ and ‘science’ more than they have ever done before.

We have to be sceptical, therefore, about things said, and also cynical about things done. But we should perhaps not be entirely cynical: because then we will always forgive the politicians for what they say. Hence the importance of scepticism: of taking the things said at face value, and arguing with them by holding open other hypotheses as at least thinkable.

I have to finish by adding that Cowling’s account of the nature of modern politics is still not well understood. For instance, Rafael Behr was prating in the Guardian recently about how we live in an “era of cynicism and mistrust” about politicians. What a shame! No, this is not a shame. (Behr here engages in the misunderstanding that politics is as liberal and unchallenging as it pretends to be. Pull the other wooden leg, Behr.) Nay, this cynicism and mistrust indicates that the public is coming to understand the trick rather better than has been usual: or that politicians are becoming more inept in how they present themselves, and are perhaps engaging too stupidly in the pretence that what they are saying is sincere. If they were insincere, we might consider trusting them; but, alas, if they are sincere, and this seems to be the case, then they are fools. And in the last 10 years – with Covid, climate, DEI, immigration etc. – politicians have managed to suggest either that they take us for fools or, worse, that they themselves are fools.

Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.

Tags: Climate ScepticismGreeceLockdown ScepticPhilosophyPolitics

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36 Comments
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Monro
Monro
8 months ago

They are fools!

Double their pay so that politics at least recruits a higher grade of numpty!

4
0
Tyrbiter
Tyrbiter
8 months ago
Reply to  Monro

I think you mean a lower grade.

Maybe we should pay them by results.

2
0
The Real Engineer
The Real Engineer
8 months ago
Reply to  Tyrbiter

The Private sector pay by results, the Public sector by incompetence. Of course I am a skeptic, but experience says it all!

3
0
Norfolk-Sceptic
Norfolk-Sceptic
8 months ago
Reply to  The Real Engineer

The evidence is that there are plenty of competence in the public sector, but it’s usually the technical people inhabiting the lower strata of the hierarchy.

Though the large corporations aren’t immune either.

Last edited 8 months ago by Norfolk-Sceptic
1
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kev
kev
8 months ago
Reply to  Tyrbiter

But then they would get nothing, and that would be such a shame!

Minimum wage, and receipted expenses.

1
0
MajorMajor
MajorMajor
8 months ago

Cynicism is the natural response to the current political system where there is a massive difference between the advertised and actual aims of politicians.
Advertised aim: protecting public health. Actual: control and censorship.
Advertised aim: diversity. Actual aim: uniformity.
Advertised aim: improving public services. Actual aim: increasing dependence on the state.
Advertised aim: curb right wing extremism. Actual aim: enforce left wing groupthink.
And so on, and so forth.
It is getting to the point where there is virtually no connection between what is being said and what is being done.

10
0
Tyrbiter
Tyrbiter
8 months ago
Reply to  MajorMajor

I think it has ever been exactly thus, hence that well known quotation about fooling the people only being possible some of the time.

Last edited 8 months ago by Tyrbiter
2
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
8 months ago

Breaking News

https://order-order.com/2024/12/04/french-government-falls-as-barnier-loses-confidence-vote/#:~:text=FALLS%20AS%20BARNIER-,LOSES,-CONFIDENCE%20VOTE

The French government has fallen.

1
0
MajorMajor
MajorMajor
8 months ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Do you ever get the impression the whole of the western world is in protracted decline and nobody knows how to fix things?
France is a good example.
OK, the government has fallen. And? Now what? Any ideas?

Last edited 8 months ago by MajorMajor
4
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
8 months ago
Reply to  MajorMajor

I think the destruction of the Western World is deliberate and planned in detail. The perps are the Davos Deviants as I call them – Blackrock / Fink, Schwab, Soros, Gates, that lot. We don’t really have any people of worth standing against them, Trump, Farage, the Hungarian PM and one or two others at best.Time is short though, less than five years now. The world envisioned for us is certainly not one I wish to live in and the future is grim.

Too many people are sleep-walking, almost literally in to a dystopian nightmare. Apathy could destroy humanity. The DD’s are so far up their own fundaments they cannot see that, sadly.

6
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
8 months ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

But that can’t be right. I heard that women and gay men were the cause of the downfall of civilization as we know it? 🤔 Is it possible that Soros or Gatesy could be a little bit gay? Even just a teeny bit 🤏 ? That’d surely explain all these men in positions of power and influence destroying the world and reshaping society. I think Windy Millerband’s a bit bi, at least. 👀 After all, straight men can do no wrong, according to certain, erm..men. 🤭 🤡

Ooh look. Scratch the surface and you’ll usually find Blackrock. Another man ( is Fink gay? Perhaps he is, just part-time ) that’s complicit in destroying health, via that dairy poison stuff. I’m gutted as I love Lurpack;

https://x.com/UnityNewsNet/status/1864291526156705979

Last edited 8 months ago by Mogwai
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
8 months ago
Reply to  Mogwai

I’m bloody sick of Alphabetism, I know that.

4
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
8 months ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

The Firnenichs, ( from DSM Firmenich, who produce Bovaer), as well as the majority of the board of directors, are male. Crap. 😬 Not looking good for the “when women are in charge it all goes to pot” theory, is it?

https://our-company.dsm-firmenich.com/en/our-company/leadership/board-of-directors.html

Last edited 8 months ago by Mogwai
0
-1
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
8 months ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Christys on GBN last night called Starmers’ “Great Reset”….I thought to myself, there’s already one of those at play and one that starmer agrees with. People never mention the reset these days, like it was one big conspiracy yet promulgated by most Western heads of state.

0
0
Norfolk-Sceptic
Norfolk-Sceptic
8 months ago
Reply to  MajorMajor

There are plenty of competent people around, but they are weeded out by the time they are 40.

As Technology has grown in the West, it’s surprising how the positions of influence and decision making do not reflect that. If you think that Technical People, aka STEM specialists, can’t do Management, is likely that’s because they haven’t been given an opportunity to the extent that Art’s and Humanities graduates have been.

Just look at the Energy Secretaries over the last 17 years, where Engineering or a Physical Science, vital skills required for understanding infrastructure projects, are absent.

1
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
8 months ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Great news. Down with globalist Micron! 🥳 What they need is Le Pen in charge. But I guess because she’s female she’s bound to make a bigger hash of things than he did. Right?🤷‍♀️

0
-1
The Enforcer
The Enforcer
8 months ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Dairy farmers should rule the world – try milking 300 cows at 5am and no-one about to help one out of a problem – but they get milked by 8am.

0
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
8 months ago

Cynics are bitter.

Sceptics take charge of their destinies and are generally optimistic despite their awareness of the challenges ahead.

5
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
8 months ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

As our resident Frennch correspondent what’s your take on the Breaking News M A k?

1
0
Tyrbiter
Tyrbiter
8 months ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

They’ll be getting ever more desperate not to allow Marine le Pen to consolidate her position. I bet that the embezzlement accusations are concocted.

Last edited 8 months ago by Tyrbiter
2
0
Tyrbiter
Tyrbiter
8 months ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

I’m bitter and twisted but I certainly have taken charge of my destiny.

Won’t be fooled again!

2
0
Norfolk-Sceptic
Norfolk-Sceptic
8 months ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

Couldn’t agree more! 🙂

1
0
Jeff Chambers
Jeff Chambers
8 months ago

What’s interesting about many of our modern politicians is not that they are cynical but that they are malignantly evil. They are people engaged in a terrible project – the abolition of the English people, for example – which they hide by claiming that they are engaged in redeeming the world. Associated with this preposterous claim is the idea that we, the ordinary people, are a collection of deplorable “phobes” and “ists” who must be silenced. And this process of silencing is obviously a prelude to our deletion. For this reason we don’t regard them with scepticism – we regard them with fear and hatred.

7
0
Insurrectionist
Insurrectionist
8 months ago

This is interesting, Dominic Cummings – “The UK is run by The Deep State”….”The cabinet is just staged theatre”….
The truth is slowing coming out, never be fully out as to who exactly The Deep State is however..

https://youtu.be/zEnLI0eD-9k?si=0UiGZhj6kVqN0JRs

Last edited 8 months ago by Insurrectionist
4
0
Smudger
Smudger
8 months ago
Reply to  Insurrectionist

Well worth watching.

2
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
8 months ago
Reply to  Insurrectionist

Glad you found that, save me looking. This was mentioned in UK Column News last week. There is plenty to slag off with Cummings but at least he’s prepared to highlight this to the World.

1
0
harrydaly
harrydaly
8 months ago

Don’t you think the Professor is an education? He thinks therefore we think. And even if we don’t , we learn something. I hope Bilkent knows how lucky it is.

2
0
7941MHKB
7941MHKB
8 months ago

Cynicism? I wonder why?

“We realised we could get away with it”.
: Neil ‘Professor Pantsdown” Ferguson.

2
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
8 months ago
Reply to  7941MHKB

Also….WEF…”.We own the science and I think they should know it”

0
0
FerdIII
FerdIII
8 months ago

Sceptic: proof is needed for any assertion

Cynic: I am assume that you are lying or have an ulterior motive

Cynsceptic: By default you are not to be trusted until proven trustworthy, or your belief system cannot be trusted until proven valid.

You find the above in orthodox Christian culture. Your word is your contract for eg. an idea that is out of vogue in the nominalist subjectivist age of egocentric narcissim.

1
0
The Real Engineer
The Real Engineer
8 months ago
Reply to  FerdIII

Science used to be entirely skeptical. We made enormous progress. Science is now “the science is fixed, you must believe!”. Nothing useful has happened for 50 years, and the waste of resources is immense. Take nuclear fusion, about 50 years ago a brilliant man pointed out that the process was inherently unstable (chaotic in fact) and therefore couldn’t be confined by magnetic fields, because the reaction itself generated large fields which are chaotic in character and therefore unknown second by second. Result total failure after huge expenditure. Now they want £100 Billion more to build an even bigger impossible disaster. It is gradually becoming clear that the sun is immensely more complex than a bit of a fusion reaction, but “It will work” continues!

3
0
Norfolk-Sceptic
Norfolk-Sceptic
8 months ago
Reply to  The Real Engineer

One hurdle is that Fusion requires heat to be removed from a Surface, the surface of the Plasma, while Fission requires the easier task of extracting heat from a Volume, of a Solid or or Liquid.

It’s such simple Physics to explain the failure of such a complicated project.

1
0
Norfolk-Sceptic
Norfolk-Sceptic
8 months ago
Reply to  FerdIII

‘Evidence is required’ is a less brutal way of working, and allows judgement, where appropriate.

The Auditors’ mantra of ‘Trust, and Verify’ is a practical version as much that is useful cannot be proved. And a ‘Mathematical Proof’ can be much harder to understand than the explanation of the underlying Physics (or Chemistry).

1
0
Myra
Myra
8 months ago

I don’t know. I get really tired of working out what politicians say, do or stand for.
All I experience is that they tell
untruths frequently, appear to be self-serving and come up with policies which don’t make sense.
The article seems to imply that an honest politician with common sense and a vision will not survive in the democratic system.
Might be worth a try though…

1
0
David
David
8 months ago
Reply to  Myra

Bear in mind the old joke about diplomats: good men sent to lie abroad for their country.

Domestic politics is a kind of diplomacy – the aim is to gain acceptance of yourself or your ideas and your vote when it comes to elections. That doesn’t make all politicians good men – but they are all in pursuit of power, status and wealth, which means that the fewer people they upset on the way the easier their path will be.

1
0
Myra
Myra
8 months ago
Reply to  David

Yes, the current lot clearly did not get the memo, trying to upset as many people as they can along the way?
I wonder what the Labour voters think of it all? Are they really pleased?

1
0

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