In the previous post I talked about how and why ancient Cynics condemned wealth – as in fact they condemned anything that a person had and considered important to their happiness and wellbeing.  If wellbeing resides in things you possess, they can be taken away from you, leading to misery.  And so, the key to happiness is not to be attached to anything.  And the only way to assure that you’re *not* attached to something is not to have it at all.  So Cynics maintained you should give it all away – for the sake of your happiness.

This was considered an extreme view, but it reveals an underlying sentiment among many ancient philosophers, that happiness cannot reside in your possessions.   Most of these philosophers, though, maintained that the problem was not wealth per se, but a personal attachment it.  For these thinkers, it was perfectly fine, even good, to be abundantly affluent.  The (potential) problem was being obsessively attached to possessions and allowing wealth to control the course of life.  That is: you could be rich if you did not feel a need to be.

This may sound like a bourgeois justification for inequality, injustice, and all the side-effects of lucre.  And, well, it is.  It’s important to emphasize that we only know of such views from