What we have, and how thin it is
Diogenes of Sinope, roughly 412 to 323 BCE. Exiled from Sinope over a currency scandal, possibly for defacing the coinage, which he later turned into his slogan: deface the currency, meaning overturn the counterfeit values everyone lives by.
He wrote things and none survive. Nearly everything comes from Diogenes Laertius, writing some five hundred years later and collecting anecdotes with no great concern for whether they happened. Treat the stories as a tradition rather than as biography.
| The story | What it's arguing |
|---|---|
| Lived in a large ceramic jar (pithos, not a barrel) | Shelter is a need; a house is a convention. He kept the need and dropped the convention. |
| Carried a lit lamp in daylight, 'looking for an honest man' | Not misanthropy so much as a public demonstration that the search fails. |
| Alexander offered him anything; he asked him to stop blocking the sun | The most powerful man alive had nothing Diogenes wanted. Alexander reportedly said that if he weren't Alexander he'd want to be Diogenes. |
| Threw away his cup after seeing a boy drink from his hands | Every possession is a claim about what you can't do without, and most claims are false. |
| Plato defined man as a featherless biped; Diogenes produced a plucked chicken | Definitions are cheap. Philosophy done in a classroom deserves an interruption. |
| Ate, and did rather more, in public | If an act isn't shameful in private, shame in public is convention rather than morality. |
Cynicism, before the word changed meaning
A modern cynic assumes people act from bad motives. An ancient Cynic held that virtue is the only good, that it consists in living according to nature rather than convention, and that everything else (wealth, reputation, comfort, property) is worthless and mostly in the way.
The word comes from kynikos, doglike, either from the Cynosarges gymnasium or, more likely, as an insult they adopted with pleasure. Living like a dog was the point: shameless, self-sufficient, indifferent to status.
So the anecdotes aren't eccentricity. Each is a performed argument, which is exactly what the Cynics thought philosophy should be. Writing books about virtue while owning a house was, in their view, the joke.
Why he still matters
Cynicism fed directly into Stoicism. Zeno of Citium, who founded the Stoa, studied under Crates, who was Diogenes' student. The Stoic idea that externals are indifferent is Cynicism with the edges filed off and made liveable for people with jobs.
He also invented, or at least first recorded, the word cosmopolitan. Asked where he came from, he said he was a citizen of the world, which nobody had claimed before.
Reading around him
Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Eminent Philosophers book 6 is the source, and it's entertaining. For where the ideas went, Stoicism for beginners. For a related suspicion of convention from the other side of Asia, the Zhuangzi, which has a comparable taste for the useless and the absurd.
365 Days of Philosophy covers him in the ancient sequence.
Common questions
Did Diogenes really live in a barrel?
A large ceramic storage jar, a pithos, rather than a barrel; barrels didn't exist in Greece then. Whether he actually lived in one is a tradition recorded centuries later rather than a documented fact.
What did Diogenes say to Alexander the Great?
Asked what he wanted, he reportedly told Alexander to stand out of his sunlight. Alexander is said to have replied that if he were not Alexander, he would want to be Diogenes.
What is Cynicism?
The ancient school holding that virtue is the only good and consists in living according to nature rather than convention. Wealth, reputation and comfort are worthless. It has almost nothing to do with the modern meaning.
Why was Diogenes called a dog?
From kynikos, doglike, probably intended as an insult and adopted with enthusiasm. Living like a dog, shameless and self-sufficient, was the position rather than the accusation.
Did Diogenes influence Stoicism?
Directly. Zeno of Citium, who founded Stoicism, studied under Crates, who was Diogenes' student. The Stoic view that externals are indifferent is Cynicism made liveable.