Diogenes
412–323 BC 9 entries
Biography
Diogenes of Sinope was a Greek philosopher and the best known of the Cynics, who taught that a good life is a simple one, lived according to nature and free of needless wants and empty custom. Born in Sinope, a Greek city on the Black Sea, he was exiled after a scandal over the defacing of the city’s coins, in which his father, a banker, was also involved. In Athens he followed the teaching of Antisthenes, a pupil of Socrates, and lived in poverty, sleeping in a large clay jar. When he saw a child drink water from its hands, he threw away his cup, saying that a child had beaten him in plain living.
His sharp tongue and provocative acts made him famous. He walked through the city in daylight with a lit lamp, saying he was looking for a human being, and when Plato defined man as a featherless biped, he brought a plucked chicken into the school: “Here is Plato’s man.” Tradition says he was later sold as a slave and spent his last years in Corinth, where Alexander the Great came to see him. He died around 323 BC. His writings are lost, and his life is known mainly from the stories collected by Diogenes Laërtius centuries later.
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