Diogenes of Sinope

Birth Date

Birth Year

-412

Death Date

Death Year

-323

Era

Classical Greek

Hook

Diogenes of Sinope is the Greek philosopher who lived in a barrel in Athens, walked the marketplace with a lantern in daylight looking for an honest man, and produced the canonical exemplification of the Cynic philosophical tradition through the ostentatious rejection of conventional propriety.

Influenced By

Influences

Key Concepts

Learning

Pillar

Philosophy

Publications

Region

Ancient Greece

Slug

diogenes-of-sinope

Status

Draft

Stories

Summary

The Greek philosopher whose ostentatious rejection of conventional propriety produced the canonical exemplification of Cynic philosophy and whose anecdotes have made him one of the most-recognized single figures from the ancient philosophical tradition.

Tradition

Cynicism

Wiki URL

Year Notes

Birth around 412 BCE in Sinope (Pontus, modern Turkey); death traditionally given as 323 BCE in Corinth, the same year as Alexander the Great's death.

Introduction

Diogenes of Sinope is the Greek philosopher of the fourth century BCE whose ostentatious rejection of conventional propriety produced the canonical exemplification of Cynic philosophy. The Cynic tradition takes its name from the Greek kynikos (dog-like) — a term originally applied to Diogenes as an insult because of his shameless conduct, which Diogenes embraced as a positive description of the philosophical life. The framework Diogenes exemplified became one of the four major Hellenistic philosophical schools alongside Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism.

Diogenes wrote works according to Diogenes Laertius's list, but nothing has survived directly. The biographical record consists of anecdotes preserved in Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Eminent Philosophers Book VI, in Plutarch, in Stobaeus, and in scattered passages throughout the doxographical and biographical tradition. The historical Diogenes is therefore inseparable from the Diogenes of legend; the anecdotes that have shaped the image (the barrel, the lantern, the meeting with Alexander) are partly historical and partly later constructions designed to exemplify the Cynic framework.

Life

Diogenes was born around 412 BCE in Sinope, a Greek colony on the southern coast of the Black Sea (in modern Turkey). The biographical accounts report that he was exiled from his native city for defacement of the coinage — either a literal involvement in counterfactual currency or, on some accounts, a metaphorical reference to the more general transgression that would shape his philosophy. The expression defacing the coinage (or defacing the currency) became one of the canonical Cynic phrases, indicating the overthrow of conventional standards that the Cynic life enacts.

Diogenes traveled to Athens, where he attached himself to the philosopher Antisthenes (a student of Socrates and one of the early figures the doxographical tradition identifies as the philosophical predecessor of Cynicism). The reports describe Diogenes pursuing Antisthenes until the older philosopher accepted him as a student; Diogenes is reported to have followed Antisthenes through the streets of Athens until Antisthenes, in exasperation, struck him with a staff, whereupon Diogenes said: Strike, for you will find no wood hard enough to keep me from you, so long as I think you have something to say.

The Athenian years saw Diogenes adopt the ostentatious poverty that became the canonical image of Cynic life. He lived in a large clay jar (pithos, often translated as barrel or tub) in the marketplace; he carried only a staff, a cloak, and a wallet; he relied on whatever food was given to him; he made his bodily functions visible rather than private; he refused the conventions of property, status, and political participation that defined ordinary Greek civic life.

Diogenes was captured by pirates on a voyage and sold into slavery in Corinth, where he was bought by Xeniades to be tutor to his sons. Diogenes spent the rest of his life in Corinth and reportedly died there in 323 BCE — traditionally on the same day as Alexander the Great's death, though the synchronism may be a later construction.

The famous anecdotes

The Diogenes legend consists of anecdotes that exemplify Cynic principles. The major ones, in the order they appear in Diogenes Laertius Book VI:

The meeting with Alexander: Alexander the Great, visiting Corinth, sought out Diogenes and found him sunbathing. Alexander offered to grant him any favor; Diogenes asked him to step aside out of his sunlight. Alexander reportedly said: If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

The lantern in daylight: Diogenes walked the Athenian marketplace in broad daylight carrying a lit lantern, telling those who asked that he was looking for an honest man. The image has entered Western iconography as the canonical visual representation of the search for honest human life under conditions where honesty has become hard to find.

The cup and the boy: Diogenes carried only a wooden cup as a possession until he saw a boy drinking water from his cupped hands; he threw away the cup and said the boy had taught him that even one possession was unnecessary.

The masturbation in the marketplace: Diogenes performed sexual acts in public to demonstrate that what was natural should not be hidden by convention. He famously said he wished hunger could be similarly satisfied by rubbing the stomach.

The cosmopolitan: When asked his city of origin, Diogenes replied I am a citizen of the world (kosmopolites). The phrase coined the term cosmopolitan and the political concept it names — the recognition of one's citizenship in the universal human community rather than in any restricted local polity.

The plucked chicken: When Plato had defined the human being as a featherless biped, Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it to Plato's Academy, announcing: Behold Plato's man. Plato revised the definition.

The philosophical framework

The substantive philosophical framework underlying the anecdotes is the Cynic doctrine of natural life as the proper human good. The framework has several connected commitments.

Virtue is sufficient for happiness. The Cynic shares with the Stoic tradition (which would emerge from the Cynic-influenced Stoic framework of Zeno of Citium) the doctrine that the human good is virtue alone and that external goods (health, wealth, reputation, life itself) are at best indifferent. The Cynic differs from the Stoic in the more radical practical conclusion: not only are external goods indifferent in theory, the philosophical life should publicly demonstrate this indifference through the ostentatious renunciation of comfort, propriety, and social status.

Convention conceals nature. The Cynic framework distinguishes between physis (nature) and nomos (convention) and holds that conventions systematically conceal what is natural. The philosophical task is to strip away convention to reveal the natural — in dress (the simple cloak), in diet (whatever is available), in bodily function (visible rather than hidden), in social relations (direct rather than mediated by status).

Self-sufficiency (autarkeia) is the goal. The Cynic life aims at the radical reduction of dependence on external things and other people. The agent who needs nothing external for their good is invulnerable to external loss; the agent who needs the goods of fortune, by contrast, is continuously vulnerable to fortune's reversals.

The philosophical life requires public exemplification. The Cynic does not develop theoretical doctrines and argue for them in academic discourse; the Cynic exemplifies the philosophical life through visible action. The anecdotal character of the Diogenes legend is integral to the framework: the philosophy is what Diogenes did, not what he wrote.

Cosmopolitanism. The Cynic rejection of conventional ties extends to political and ethnic ties. The Cynic recognizes citizenship in the universal human community rather than in any restricted polity. The framework shaped subsequent Stoic cosmopolitanism and the broader Western tradition of universalist humanism.

Reception

The ancient reception of Diogenes was substantial. The Cynic tradition continued through Crates of Thebes (the second-generation Cynic who taught Zeno of Citium) and remained an active philosophical movement through the Roman imperial period. The Stoic tradition inherited Cynic elements through the Crates-Zeno connection; the Stoic doctrine of indifferents, the emphasis on virtue as sufficient for happiness, and the cosmopolitan framework all show Cynic genealogy.

The early Christian period found congruence between Cynic and ascetic Christian frameworks. The monastic and ascetic traditions of late antique and medieval Christianity exhibit Cynic features (the rejection of property, the public exemplification of the philosophical life, the cosmopolitan rejection of restricted communal ties), though the substantive theological framework differs.

The Renaissance recovery of Diogenes Laertius through Ambrogio Traversari's Latin translation (1433) brought the Cynic anecdotes to Renaissance Europe. The image of Diogenes — in his barrel, with his lantern, dismissing Alexander — became a standard subject in Renaissance and Baroque painting; the iconographic tradition through Raphael (the figure in the foreground of The School of Athens), Caravaggio, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and many others has kept Diogenes visible in Western visual culture.

The modern engagement has been substantial. The German Romantic engagement (especially through Christoph Martin Wieland's novel Socrates Mainomenos: oder die Dialogen des Diogenes von Sinope, 1770) revived the philosophical figure. Friedrich Nietzsche's engagement with Cynic themes (especially in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Genealogy of Morality) developed the Cynic critique of conventional morality. Michel Foucault's late lectures at the Collège de France (especially The Government of Self and Others, 1982–83, and The Courage of the Truth, 1983–84) gave sustained engagement with Cynic parrēsia (truth-telling) as a model for contemporary philosophical practice.

The contemporary scholarship through Luis Navia, R. Bracht Branham, Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, and the broader work on Hellenistic philosophy continues to develop the framework.

Continuing engagement

Major recent scholarly work includes Luis Navia's Diogenes the Cynic (2005), R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé's The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy (1996), Sloterdijk's engagement in Critique of Cynical Reason (1983), and the Cambridge Companion to the Cynics (2007). Active scholarly debates concern the separation of historical Diogenes from later legend, the relation between Cynic and Stoic frameworks, the contemporary political relevance of the Cynic tradition in conditions of inequality, and the relation between ancient Cynicism and the contemporary popular use of cynical (which inverts the original sense).