It also entailed not merely indifference to civilized life but complete rejection of it and of all forms of education and culture as being not simply irrelevant but inimical to the ideal life. Freedom, self-sufficiency, happiness, and virtue supposedly followed. This entailed the minimum of material possessions (coarse cloak, staff for physical support and protection, bag for food) and of sustenance (obtained by living off the land, stealing and begging) performance in public of all natural functions training in physical endurance, and a wandering existence in harmony with natural conditions. primitivists, and Antisthenes) of living in accordance with nature rather than law/convention the tradition, perhaps sharpened by contemporary disillusionment with the polis, of promulgating ideal societies or constitutions a tradition of ‘shamelessness’ (reflected by the symbol of the dog in literature and by the supposed customs of certain foreign peoples) Socratic rejection of all elements of philosophy except practical ethics Socrates' pursuit of philosophy in the agora rather than in a school an anti-intellectual tradition the tradition (variously represented by Odysseus, Heracles, the Spartans, and to some extent by Socrates) of physical toughness as a requirement of virtue the image of the suffering hero and the wanderer (Odysseus, Heracles, various tragic figures) the tradition of mendicancy (represented both in literature and in life) the life of asceticism and poverty (as represented by various wise men and holy men and labourers and praised by moralists) the tradition of the wise or holy man who promises converts happiness or salvation and various humorous traditions (the jester's practical and verbal humour Old comedy's outspokenness and crudity (see comedy (Greek), Old) Socrates' serio-comic wit).ĭiogenes pursued a life as close as possible to the ‘natural’ life of primitive man, of animals, and of the gods. (His capture by pirates, consultation of Delphi, and discipleship of Socrates' follower Antisthenes ( 1) are fictitious.) He evolved a distinctive and original way of life from diverse, mainly Greek, elements: the belief (espoused by certain types of holy men and wise men) that wisdom was a matter of action rather than thought the principle (advanced by various sophists, 5th-cent. 70–3 preserves his essential thought.Īccused with his father, moneyer at Sinope, of ‘defacing the currency’ (a phrase which would yield a potent metaphor), Diogenes was exiled some time after 362 and spent the rest of his life in Athens and Corinth. All accounts are controversial, but the ancient traditions show certain constants and Diogenes (6) Laertius 6. Ancient and modern reactions range from appreciation of his wit to admiration for his supposed integrity, anxiety to integrate him into a formal philosophical succession from Socrates to the Stoics, denial of his philosophical significance, revulsion at his shamelessness, dislike of the threat he posed to conventional social and political values, and doomed attempts to make him respectable. The general distortions in the ancient traditions about Cynicism (‘doggishness’) multiply in the case of Diogenes.
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