If you are to be kept right, you must possess either good friends or red-hot enemies. A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.ħ. As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.Ħ. Even if I am but a pretender to wisdom, that in itself is philosophy.ĥ.

Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.Ĥ. Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?ģ. Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.Ģ. This is where we get such thought-provoking and inspiring quotations from. Unfortunately, we have no writings of Diogenes to learn from but other sources share an insight into his life, his stories and events around the time he was alive. It was Zeno who transformed these ideas into the Stoicism school of philosophy, perhaps one of the most well known and enduring schools of philosophy to date. It was here that he taught his ideas to Crates, who in turn passed the philosophy of cynicism down to Zeno. He lived in relative poverty, often begging for a living, whilst being a vocal critic of the social values he saw around him, including criticising some important people in history such as Plato and Alexander the Great.Įventually, Diogenes was captured by pirates and his fate was to be sold into slavery, following which he ended up in Corinth. No writings of Diogenes' are known but there are some details of his life from anecdotes, especially from Diogenes Laërtius' book Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers and some other sources.Diogenes was an Ancient Greek philosopher born around 404-412 BC and is known as one of the founders of Cynicism, a form of philosophy that believes the purpose of life should be to live in virtue, in agreement with nature.Īfter being exiled from his family home in Sinope, he went to Athens and didn’t approve of the city he found, instead deciding to model himself on Heracles, believing that action is a better way to live in virtue than simply the theory of it. There he passed his philosophy of Cynicism to Crates, who taught it to Zeno of Citium, who fashioned it into the school of Stoicism, one of the most enduring schools of Greek philosophy. Diogenes was also noted for having mocked Alexander the Great, both in public and to his face when he visited Corinth in 336 BC.Diogenes was captured by pirates and sold into slavery, eventually settling in Corinth. He criticized Plato, disputed his interpretation of Socrates, and sabotaged his lectures, sometimes distracting listeners by bringing food and eating during the discussions. He became notorious for his philosophical stunts, such as carrying a lamp during the day, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He begged for a living and often slept in a large ceramic jar, or pithos, in the marketplace. There are many tales about his dogging Antisthenes' footsteps and becoming his 'faithful hound'.ĭiogenes made a virtue of poverty. He declared himself a cosmopolitan and a citizen of the world rather than claiming allegiance to just one place. He had a reputation for sleeping and eating wherever he chose in a highly non-traditional fashion, and took to toughening himself against nature. He used his simple lifestyle and behaviour to criticize the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt, confused society. He modelled himself on the example of Heracles, and believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. After being exiled, he moved to Athens and criticized many cultural conventions of the city. His father minted coins for a living, and Diogenes was banished from Sinope when he took to debasement of currency. He was born in Sinope, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea, in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC.Diogenes was a controversial figure. Diogenes, also known as Diogenes the Cynic, was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy.

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