Abstract

Although a temporal distance of more than two thousands of years, Hellenism and contemporary society show analogous “spirits of time” ; with characteristics such as cultural malaise, loss of the old political and social frameworks, cultural syncretism, or recovery of nature and regulatory framework. Hellenistic ethics emerged as therapeutics that would guide the individual in this crisis of the Greek world. In this paper examines the possibility of using the critical tools of the old cynicism, to apply them therapeutically on the global ecological crisis, created by industrial capitalism. The principles of ancient cynicism can be recycled for a project of degrowth society.