![]() ![]() Plato’s life, like the life of most career academics, was relatively dull. ![]() ![]() The problem with Plato is that he was not much fun. We also know very little about Diogenes of Sinope, yet he’s had three biographers to date. We have no official Athenian records of his life, and the earliest (short) biographies were set down centuries later. The reasons for this neglect are partly historiographic: Though Plato’s dialogues survive, they barely mention him. How could Western philosophy, in its infancy, encompass such divergent figures: on one side, a scholar of metaphysics who was a member of the Athenian 1 percent, and on the other, a mendicant gadfly without political capital, a street performer known for his verbal wit, an activist who dismissed Plato’s discourse as a “waste of time”? Newly published books about the lives of Plato and Diogenes send us back to a time when philosophy did not know what it would grow up to be.Ī remarkable fact about Robin Waterfield’s Plato of Athens is that it’s the first full-length biography of Plato ever published. (When he saw a boy drinking from the hollow of his own hand, Diogenes threw away his cup: It was superfluous.) He did not live in a large ceramic jar, owning no more than a cloak, a stick, and a knapsack, as Diogenes is said to have done. When we think about the birth of Western philosophy, we tend to think of Diogenes’s contemporary, Plato, a systematic theorist who founded an academy and whose written dialogues, clocking in at more than half a million words, have been preserved in full. Philosophy is notoriously difficult to define, but you may wonder if this really counts. He replied, “Ruling over men,” and told the herald, “Spread the word in case anyone wants to buy himself a master.” Flouting social norms, Diogenes was said to masturbate in the marketplace, responding to side-eyed glances with bemusement: “If only one could do away hunger by rubbing one’s stomach.” Admonished for drinking in a bar, Diogenes shot back, “I also get my hair cut in a barbershop.” Captured and sold into slavery, Diogenes was asked to list his skills. Diogenes’s reputation rests on a gift for one-liners in the spirit of Groucho Marx. Yet his legacy doesn’t lie in his written work-almost none of which survives-but in colorful anecdotes about his life recorded by contemporaries and compiled most prominently by his namesake, Diogenes Laërtius, about 600 years later in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. It also includes an extensively annotated translation of Diogenes Laertius' Life of Diogenes of Sinope, which is our principal source of information about the philosopher.D iogenes of Sinope, a beggar who lived on the streets of Athens in the fourth century B.C.E., has been hailed as the progenitor of performance art, an inspiration for the Occupy movement, and, by the novelist Joyce Carol Oates, “the first, some might claim the best, stand-up comic.” This comprehensive study reconstructs his biography on the basis of classical and Arabic sources, identifies the main ideas and principles of his philosophy, and shows the application of his philosophical message for our contemporary world. The task of reconstructing the philosopher's life, however, is exceedingly difficult, because in his case, more than in those of other ancient philosophers, we must deal not only with the scarcity of reliable sources and testimonies, but also with the mountains of anecdotal and fictional accounts that are responsible for the creation of a veritable literary legend around the Cynic who once lived in a tub. The life and teachings of Diogenes of Sinope, the Greek philosopher who gave rise to classical Cynicism, deserve careful consideration because of their relevance to contemporary ethical issues. ![]()
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