Diogenes was captured by pirates and sold into slavery, eventually settling in Corinth. 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.
No writings of Diogenes survive, but there are some details of his life from anecdotes (chreia), especially from Diogenes Laërtius' book Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers and some other sources. Diogenes made a virtue of poverty. He begged for a living and often slept in a large ceramic jar, or pithos, in the marketplace. He used his simple lifestyle and behavior to criticize the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt, confused society. 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 declared himself a cosmopolitan and a citizen of the world rather than claiming allegiance to just one place.
He modeled himself on the example of Heracles, believing that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. He became notorious for his philosophical stunts, such as carrying a lamp during the day, claiming to be looking for a "man" (often rendered in English as "looking for an honest man"). He criticized Plato, disputed his interpretation of Socrates, and sabotaged his lectures, sometimes distracting listeners by bringing food and eating during the discussions. Diogenes was also noted for having mocked Alexander the Great, both in public and to his face when he visited Corinth in 336 BC.
Damn.
sometimes distracting listeners by bringing food and eating during the discussions
:amber-snacking: lmao
Diogenes was also noted for having mocked Alexander the Great, both in public and to his face when he visited Corinth in 336 BC.
damn :gigachad:
He's a bit of an internet nerd hero these days but there are some great stories about Diogenes, the Alexander the Great one is hilarious. He was sunbathing when Alexander the Great met him, and Alexander asked him if he wanted anything at all from the most powerful man in the world - and Diogenes said "yes, to move out of the sun." Then when Alexander was leaving he said "if I had not been born Alexander, I would certainly hope to be Diogenes" and Diogenes said "I as well."
The most famous one is definitely the time that Aristotle was trying to define a man and came up with "featherless biped" so the next day Diogenes showed up with a plucked chicken and let it loose in the forum and said "behold, a man!" So Aristotle changed it to "featherless biped with broad, flat nails."
So Aristotle changed it to “featherless biped with broad, flat nails.”
hold up im gonna need a hammer, some nails, and that same plucked chicken
"In a rich man's house, there is nowhere to spit but in his face."
I felt as though Socrates never truly followed his point of “believing the other”, and that he often did semantics or in some way purposefully misunderstood what his opponent were arguing. It felt very disingenuous, especially because it was written by his pupil and had - to me - a very large “then everybody in the bus clapped” vibe.
Some of this is probably coming from the fact that Plato's rendition of Socrates was basically just a pedagogical device designed to communicate Platonic philosophy to upper-class Greek dudes. Socrates' interlocutors spend half of most of the Platonic dialogues just saying shit like "yes Socrates," and "indisputably Socrates," and "you're so wise Socrates" because the dialogues are basically just argumentative essays meant to give Plato's views. The people Socrates is talking to (at least in most dialogues; there are some limited exceptions) are just there as rhetorical devices, much like questions in a standard (i.e. non-dialogue) essay today.
Socrates was kinda broke, so he probably didn't own a slave. Regardless, slavery in antiquity was very different from the modern institution, more comparable to wage labor than chattel slavery. You'd have to put Engels down there too for owning a factory.
Finally I am acknowledged for the effort I take in posting. Now it's time to recognized as the true leftist
Socrates is to Diogenes what Ben Shapiro is to that copypasta of the dude living in a bombed out soviet era tank.
Arendt should be dropped down to basically a cop for jerking off the American revolution.
Jean-Paul Sartre did that to his lover Simone de Beauvoir's high school students, and nobody batted an eye. She groomed them, he fucked them.
machiavelli mostly just wrote about the utility of violence:fash-bash: that's a bit punk imo
Do you think he would have been a fan of the Stooge's Raw Power album?
power for the State as-can-be-embodied-in a Prince. the idea that a state should do absolutely anything for self-perpetuation is a bit toxic in the hands of the bourgeois, perhaps harmful to the socialist elimination of the state, but also quite instructive to AES.
:pit: is an application of machiavellian political philosophy, not just being a backstabbing powermonger cartoon villain
I can read Wittgenstein over and over again and constantly come away with a new way of viewing something
Yeah, Arendt should be under the "not very punk" category. Maybe her dissertation (Love and St. Augustine) was kind of punk, but as soon as you get into Origins of Totalitarianism, Human Condition kind of stuff, it's definitely not punk anymore. Not bootlicking cop shit, just uhhhhh not punk.
Which section is that in? I mostly remember the imperialism section for her analysis of the Boers and the way they positioned themselves as the "true natives" even though it was obviously false.
I'll have to dig out my copy sometime and look into it, since I vaguely remember that passage as well, but my impression was she was judgmental of the whites, but that book was so long and boring I might have missed some key racist shitheading.
Yeah this all sounds vaguely familiar, I guess when I read it I thought she was representing the European position (i.e. the colonizer sees Africa as outside of history) and why they were able to do such unique evil. Which actually isn't terrible and makes sense, you have to dehistoricize and dehumanize people to do great evil.
I'm going to have to revisit though because the idea Europeans "lowered themselves" to the level of Africans is pretty fuckin disgusting if so.
https://mobile.twitter.com/aiukliAfrika/status/1063203765082304512?s=19
Some passages in that thread
Thanks! I totally forgot the "they did it to themselves" bullshit, which really is incredibly damning (it's so stupid, you get it w r t American colonization as well, entirely eliding things like biological warfare, etc). It's also pretty much exactly as bad as I feared.
One of the worst western :brainworms:
What's especially annoying is there are good analyses in the book alongside this drek. Her consideration of how modern society and totalitarian states produce loneliness is really relevant. Meanwhile, hurr durr colonialism made modern cities in far off places.
:foucault-madness: at what cost!
Similarly, Kierkegaard ought to be emo. Breaking up with your fiancée because you wish to preserve your idealized conception of her is peak emo kid behavior.
Isnt the trasymarchus bit in the republic suposed to show that folowing the laws of the polis is in oposition to philosophy?
Bataille needs to be on there and needs to be slightly higher than Camus for freaking him out with his obsession with death and filth
Immediate response: that can’t possibly be right
Secondary response: that’s probably downplaying it
Honestly tho I have no clue if Sartre and Bataille ever interacted despite the timeline overlap. Bataille mostly wrote pre-WWII and went into self-imposed exile after(his anti-fascist cult failed to take off)wards when Sartre would’ve been putting out the bulk of his work. All I know is that Bataille wrote Camus a few times about their shared scholarly interest in ‘passion’ but Bataille’s definition was too much for Camus and he wrote Bataille back asking him not to send anymore letters.
I’d have to go googling for it so you and me are equally as likely in finding it. It’s been a good while since I’ve studied Bataille and even then I mostly came in as a sociology student interested in his interpretations of Durkheim and Maus, tho fuck me if that isn’t a deep vein to mine for insight. Love the username btw tho I’m sure I’ve said that before elsewhere
I’ll push Blue of Noon on anyone and then hand them my Bataille reader afterwards if they have any questions. He’s such an interesting figure because he’s as wrong as he is right and that makes it interesting to go picking through his work for solid insights
I need to read the Story of the Eye but everyone who’s read it has told me not to (which imo means I need to read it more).
Blue of Noon is his writing on the Spanish Civil War and in that way gives a lot of insight into his thoughts on the practical applicability of leftist ideas (tho Bataille is far from an orthodox Marxist). It’s interesting if nothing else in getting his ideas of revolution, which relates back to his ideas of ‘passion,’ especially as it relates to revolutionary politics. PS it comes out very anarchist, tho I don’t know that he’s wrong that a measured revolution just produces more society. My man was just ready to peel the skin back and transcend, even if society wasn’t ready to go with him.
But yea Visions of Excess is my Bataille reader
