DIOGENES

Finding Diogenes, a philosopher who thought outside the box.

University of Virginia classics professor Kuin puts her own witty spin on the oft-quoted, witty Greek Cynic philosopher. Telling his story is “difficult” because no works by him survive. Stories about him are often hard to believe. And yet, she argues, he was “antiquity’s most independent and original mind, and his vision of simplicity, autonomy, and living in accordance with nature has much to offer in our contemporary world.” He’s a slippery fish to pin down—“A traveler and a stranger wherever he went but never at a loss for words.” She believes the debated famous meeting between Alexander and Diogenes did occur. He was probably born around 410 B.C.E. in northern Turkey and as a young man was exiled to Athens, where, Kuin believes, he lived in a big earthenware pot in a marketplace, using his cape as a blanket, living off alms and dinner invitations and comparing himself to a mouse. Plato, with whom Diogenes often disagreed, nicknamed him “the Dog.” A disinterested agnostic, he lived to “redefine the nature of philosophical inquiry,” often with morbid humor. Kuin sees his key values as the rejection of social norms; physical training; and shamelessness (he was known to pee and masturbate in public). His approach to “human pleasures, needs, and desires,” which he denied himself, “was entirely new” and “would prove enormously influential in later periods.” For Diogenes, freedom is “achieving self-reliance” through askesis―ascetic practices. He had a fearless irreverence toward rulers. The author calls him the “founder of modern cosmopolitanism,” in which all humans are considered equal members of a world community, and believes he was a unique “lone voice against slavery” who ridiculed and rejected the idea of an afterlife. Kuin concludes by looking at his impact on others, including Erasmus, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Foucault, and even, perhaps, Jesus.

A crisp, accessible, and engaging portrait of the enigmatic philosopher.