Diogenes: The Rebellious Life and Revolutionary Philosophy of the Original Cynic

Classicist Kuin (Lucian’s Laughing Gods) offers a enthralling intellectual history of Diogenes, the founder of Cynicism—a word derived from the Greek for “dog,” the moniker bestowed on Diogenes by Plato. Diogenes is best-remembered for his encounter with Alexander the Great, who, according to legend, once visited him while he was “living in a large clay pot.” When Alexander asked what he could do to help the seemingly homeless philosopher, Diogenes answered: “Just step aside, out of my sun.” The story, Kuin writes, encapsulates what Diogenes stood for: “total independence, courage in the face of power, and joyful contentment.” Unlike his contemporaries, including Plato, Diogenes didn’t lecture or debate. Instead, his was “a lived philosophy,” particularly as he “did philosophy with his body,” including practicing extreme asceticism; defecating in public to highlight the paradox of humans eating in groups but performing other bodily functions in private; and ridiculing the philosopher Zeno’s abstruse mathematical argument that movement is impossible by simply “moving his body.” Kuin asserts that Diogenes’s unconventional thinking has been relegated to the margins of academia, even as his ideas have had a lasting impact on everything from early Christianity to Foucault’s “biopower.” Today, Kuin sees Diogenes reflected in contemporary ideas about how the body can “tell the truth.” It amounts to an impressive, far-reaching look at how a unique thinker’s life has resonated for millennia. (Nov.)