Diogenes and the Cynics

Diogenes of Sinope (c. 404 to 323 BCE) came to Athens as an exile from his home city on the Black Sea, where, by ancient accounts, he or his father was in trouble for defacing the coinage. Diogenes took the charge as a motto: deface the currency, meaning overturn the stamped values of custom. In Athens he lived in a large storage jar in the marketplace area, owned a cloak, a staff and a wallet, and ate, slept and did everything in public. His rivals called him a dog, kyon in Greek, which gave the Cynic school its name, and he accepted the insult. He is said to have walked in daylight with a lamp, saying he was looking for a human being.¹³

The best-known tale says that Alexander the Great found him sunbathing and offered him any favor. Diogenes asked only that Alexander stand out of his light. Alexander is supposed to have replied that if he were not Alexander, he would wish to be Diogenes. The story is told by Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, and historians doubt it, but it captures the Cynic claim that freedom comes from needing nothing. Cynics, who looked back to Socrates' simple living and to his follower Antisthenes, held that nature should be the guide, not law or custom, and that happiness needs only virtue, plainness and the courage to speak frankly to anyone.¹²³

Diogenes' follower Crates of Thebes, with his wife Hipparchia, carried the school forward, and Crates taught Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism. Cynic ascetic ideals also fed later Christian monasticism. Today, the word cynic has come to mean a person who distrusts human motives, which is a long way from the philosophers who lived in jars.²³