[From Greek kunikos: dog-like, churlish.]
(ethics) The ancient Greek school of Cynic philosophers, founded by Antisthenes (a student of Socrates), held that pure virtue is the only good and cultivated an asceticism more rigorous than that of Epicureanism or Stoicism. Because of their disdain for worldly concerns, the Cynics were critical of conventional morality and the rest of society, almost to the point of misanthropy.