Community and Animality in the Ancient Cynics

This Chapter argues that the Cynics’ rethinking of the human being, its relation to nature and its role within the community of the cosmos may provide us with some hints towards how one may understand the reciprocal relation between community and immunity. Long before contemporary thinkers like Deleuze, Derrida, Agamben and Coetzee started to thematise the becoming animal of the human being, the Cynics had already adopted the imitation of animal life and living according to nature as the highest principle of their ethics and politics. Living according to nature led them to radically rethink what it means to be human and what we can learn from the animals. This Chapter shows that the Cynic’s way of thinking and living the human being’s relationship to its environment articulates a vision of communities of life that are inherently trans-species. They provide an example of what it means to live in common or communicate with forms of non-human life without being able to exchange either words or reasons.