 Alexander was said to have admired Diogenes of Sinov above anyone else and said, if I wasn't Alexander the Great, I wish I was Diogenes of Sinov, okay? A homeless beggar in the streets of Athens. And there's all these stories about their interactions. So supposedly Alexander introduced himself to him and said, I'm Alexander the Great and Diogenes and I'm Diogenes the Dog. And back to him. And the best story, which is in section 38 about how Alexander says, make any request of me. He's standing over him while Diogenes is sitting somewhere in the streets, sunning himself and Alexander says, make any request of me. I'll grant any request that you have. So great is his admiration for him. And Diogenes says, step out of my son, right? To the most powerful ever who's conquering all the world and so forth. And there's sort of a double meaning there. Step out of my son because I'm sunbathing and I make a trivial request of this great man. But it's also step out of my son meaning why is fame and glory being attached to somebody who's off causing global misery and chaos and so forth. As opposed to the attention being put on someone who's rejected all of this earthly stuff and yet manifests moral virtues of wisdom and courage. That's what the spotlight should be focused on, not on this military, these military victories and so forth. And there are other stories about their interaction. Now, those seem to be true. Alexander the Great was somebody who we know had a philosophical education. He'd been tutored by Aristotle of Stegyra and he took an interest in philosophy. And Diogenes is a well-known, in fact, famous figure around town. So Alexander did probably actually interact with him. But these are probably made up Hellenistic, biographical stories for amusement about their interactions. Although, by all indications, Diogenes was a witty guy who could always have a comeback and he's sort of got a Socrates-like thing like that. Not claiming to teach people things, but he's always got the upper hand in a conversation, okay? So that's his interaction with Alexander the Great, a political figure. There's also his interactions with Plato. So you notice a lot of anecdotes about him interacting with Plato and he's treading on Plato's carpets with his bare feet and so forth. And a lot of these, Plato actually gets the upper hand on him. So he says, I tread on the pride of Plato with his carpets or something and Plato responds, yes, with an even greater and more ignorant pride or something like that. And a really funny one depicted in this painting is that in the academy, they're having an obstruc debate about the definition and classification of various animals. And they're coming up with the definition of human being, something like a two-footed land animal. A two-footed animal, but some birds. Birds are obviously animals and birds have two feet. So we have to define them as being featherless, bipedal animals. And so they come up with this definition, featherless biped for what a human being is. And then supposedly Diogenes plucked the feathers off of a chicken and brought it into the academy and said, I give you Plato's human being. And Aristotle called Diogenes, Asocrates, gone mad. So that shows his intellectual level interactions, whereas the stories about his interactions with Alexander the Great show his political interactions. And so before class, we were talking about Hellenistic politics and how they relate to ethics in general. And these kind of stories show that there still was political engagement. And even people sort of speaking truth to power and that sort of thing even in a dangerous political climate. Although by the time that Alexander the Great was ascendant political situation and Athens had changed vastly from the democratic situation that Socrates was in. Okay, other questions or just things that struck you about the reading? We can focus on those. I mean, I basically picked out the ones that I thought were interesting. But I'd love to hear what occurred to you as you were reading it. Yeah. I just don't know that how come on the part of Socrates, there is no mentioning about the paradigm of the philosophy of Plato that has been under the influence of Socrates. Like, for example, the reality, the fall, this is the paradigm of the philosophy which has been most probably taken from Socrates but didn't talk about this part. Well, it's not clear to me that Plato's theory of forms, a logical and metaphysical theory is attributable to Socrates. In fact, most scholars think it isn't. Socrates talked about things like the unity of virtues and virtues being forms of knowledge and trying to come up with definitions of the individual virtues. But did he construct a metaphysical system that accounts for all of nature and these ethical values and so forth? Probably not because we have a lot of testimony that Socrates rejected those kind of logical and physical inquiries to focus only on ethics. Now, Plato clearly does get into these metaphysical issues and physics and logic and that sort of thing. And he uses Socrates as a character even in dialogues like the Sophist or the statesman where they go in for these logical and in the timeus with the natural philosophy and so forth. But that's probably Plato's views being put into the mouth of Socrates instead of Socrates' views. Now, Plato in a way is a paradigm for Hellenistic philosophy, but he's beyond a paradigm. He's a founder of a school that actually persists into the period. So he's more like Epicurus or Zeno of Pidium or somebody who actually established an institution, an institution that went on for a thousand years. The first institution of higher education that lasted that long and so on. So I'm not trying to slight Plato and in fact we're going to get into academic skepticism and various forms of academicism. And the work that we're reading by Cicero considers himself an academic following in line with Socrates and Plato. So we're reading an entire work over four weeks of somebody continuing that line of thought into the Hellenistic age. As for the specific problems with the theory of forms, we're not going to deal too much with that because we'd have to read a lot of Plato. So we'd have to read a lot of classical as opposed to Hellenistic philosophy to figure out what that theory is. But we do offer an entire course on Plato where we do that. Okay, other questions, comments, yeah? To turn to Diogenes in section 22 within Diogenes' playlists and mentioned that he was a student of Antisthenes. But what were Antisthenes philosophical views? How did those influence Diogenes? Yes, so as I mentioned last time, Antisthenes was a member of the Socratic circle. So he was a direct pupil of Socrates. Okay, and he ended up doing his own teaching, setting up teaching in a gymnasium called the cuneaux sargais, which is named after the so-called white dog. And some people think that the whole name of cynicism stems from this. Because to be a cynic means to be a dog. Cuneaux in Greek means dog. But his views were basically an extremely austere and ascetic kind of philosophy that you had to get rid of your possessions, get rid of wealth, and focus everything on being a good person. And anything that could distract from that or detract from it or lead you down a different road, you should completely reject because none of it's important. So he puts massive emphasis on virtue, self-control, courage, justice, things like that. And he also seems to have been one of the earliest people, maybe the earliest to use this idea that the main ethical principle is to live in accordance with nature and live naturally and not be corrupted by artifices of society. And so he had this refutation for being a tough, austere, ascetic philosopher totally devoted to virtue. And when Diogenes of Synope was exiled from his own city and arrived in Athens, he heard about this guy and looked him up and started following him around saying, I wanna be your pupil. And Antisthenes rejected him as a pupil and said, I'm not gonna teach you. And according to the story in Diogenes, Polaris just even tried to beat him away with a stick as depicted in this medieval manuscript. But Diogenes just took it and said, go ahead, keep beating me. I'm still gonna be your student. And so eventually he took him on as a student. And so Antisthenes wasn't really called a cynic and didn't take on this persona. So we think of him as sort of a proto-cynic. Whereas Diogenes of Synope who did allow people would insult him by calling him a dog. And he'd say, yes, exactly, I'm a dog. Dogs are a lot better than human beings, you get me? Then that starts cynicism and then there's a whole school of people that start following that lifestyle and so forth. But we can almost trace it back to an interpretation of Socrates' teachings. Now as we're gonna see on Friday, there's another interpretation of Socrates teaching that lends itself to hedonistic philosophy, pursuit of pleasure, forget about virtue, and things like that. Which just shows in a way the ambivalence of what Socrates actually said. He didn't write anything, he just had individual conversations and people took very different things away from it. But Antisthenes is one extreme of what you could take away from Socrates to say, throw everything else away and devote yourself to philosophy. While I'm at it, I should mention some things about Diogenes, about other people in this cynic movement. After Diogenes, Diogenes takes on a student named Crades of Thieves, who ends up married to a woman named Hipparchia of Maronea. Who's a female philosopher, very early female hedonistic philosopher. And they continued this live in accordance with nature and throw off all social conventions. So just as Diogenes had ate and slept and relieved himself and even masturbated in public, because why not? I'm living in accordance with nature. Those are just social conventions you're trying to oppose on me to stop it. They even went further and just started having sex in public. And saying, hey, this is natural. We all do this, we need to do this, make the species survive. You're living an unnatural life by having all of this, wearing all these clothes and having all these restrictions on following life in accordance with nature. And there are other more minor Greek cynics after that, including some whose writings survive. And then in the Roman period, it seems to have been revived a bit after the time of the sister of by the first century AD. And continued as a strong sort of second cynical movement that lasted until about the fifth century AD. Now, there's also an interpretation of Jesus as having been a cynic. If you ask, what was Jesus' philosophy? This guy who embraced poverty, rejected the conventions of his time, taught a kind of cosmopolitan doctrine about being a citizen of the world, focused on being good and everything on morality and virtue and so forth. What kind of ideas are thought to have influenced him? So there are scholars that have written that essentially he was embracing a cynic philosophy. And lifestyle and making himself as an example as a cynic. So that's just a bit about the later influence of movement. And how it relates back to Antisthenes, somebody in the Socratic circle. Okay, other questions? Yeah, go ahead. Yes, and I think I've got some very crazy artistic drawings of this one. So here's a depiction of Diogenes the Cynic walking through the streets of Athens in broad daylight carrying a lit lantern. And people saying to him, why are you carrying a lit lantern in broad daylight? And he says, because I'm searching for an honest human being. And he's not finding one. Now one interpretation of that that is depicted in this early modern piece of artwork is that he's in a depraved and cynical society where the people have devolved and they're not even human beings. You have these monstrous, saber-like figures and then sculptures of humans and other kinds of animals and so forth. But he can't actually find somebody who's living a human way of life. More recently, interpretation of this and something similar is in this famous piece of art that there's Diogenes in the center with this lantern looking for an honest human being or looking for a genuine human being, somebody who's actually human. What it actually seems to have related to is a debate about human nature and what really is a human being. A human is not just a featherless biped, right? Having two feet and dwelling on land is not enough to make you a human, okay? So what is it that makes you a human? Well, something to do with reason and rationality and using the mind, because that's what makes us different from animals and plants as living things. Well, what does it mean to use reason? Well, in Diogenes' view, it means living in accordance with nature, figuring out what nature is and then living in accordance with it and in accordance with these moral virtues like justice, courage and so forth. But you could walk around the streets of Athens and find that no one you're running into is courageous, just or anything. You just got a bunch of self-absorbed people on their cell phones and so forth that don't care anything about virtue. And so you can't find a single genuine human being according to your, according to the definition of what a human being is, that you can come up with. So again, it's in part just his kind of political theater. Walking around with a lit lantern, people wondering what the hell are you doing? And but it seems to be making a philosophical point, a criticism of everyone around him, a criticism of the society around him. But also a deep question about what is truly human, what the nature of human beings is. Okay, any other thoughts about that or anything else here? Anyone? Go ahead. Is that where Nietzsche took the episode of man searching for God? Yes, that is where all of these images of lanterns being used in art and in literature go back to diogenes. Every one of these pictures you'll see, he has a lantern in it. That's how you know you're looking at a representation of diogenes. And Nietzsche said something like there's no truer philosophy than cynicism. Which, given that it's Nietzsche, he doesn't think any philosophies are true. So what does that really amount to? But he says something like that. And it says positive things about cynics. And he tries to do on a literary level what they tried to do as actual people. Now one more thing when I was talking about the influence on this slide, that I didn't talk about because I will much later, his influence on stoicism and the cynic influence on stoicism. And we really see this in later stoics like Epictetus and so forth who hold diogenes of Synop as equal to Socrates and as being a sage. Somebody who actually knew the difference between good and bad and knew what true human success was and lived in accordance with it. And the stoic system sort of builds itself on top of cynicism and begins to present itself as well, there's basically two roots to happiness. The short root and the long and difficult root. And the long and difficult root is to study stoic logic and physics and figure this whole system out and start living in accordance with it and trying to make moral progress and so forth. The shortcut is to be a cynic, to take all of your money and go down to La Jolla on the shores and throw it into the ocean. And start just walking around, living on the streets and talking to people about virtue and trying to convince them to become virtuous people. And getting rid of all of your possessions and all of your desires and all of your connections to your immediate family and things like that that could be sources of corruption or sources of value other than living in accordance with nature. And that's really a shortcut to virtue and doing the right thing. And Stoics thought, that's just too hard for most people though, they can't do that. So we gotta design this other system that has them learning propositional logic and physics and so forth, and then you can show them how to live. But otherwise not, otherwise it's impossible. Or it's only possible through this difficult philosophical school and philosophical training that takes decades and may not actually ever be successful. But there is a shortcut to doing it and that's cynicism, living the life of a cynic. Now, I mean I think this is a really interesting idea because there's a lot about cynicism that you might see reflected around us. And even the term cynicism which is still in use, although it has a much different meaning. It seems to now mean something like people who doubt human sincerity. And they have a pessimistic view and they're motivated not by noble concerns, but only by their self-interest and what works for them. That is what is now thought when we say cynics. When we say Steve Bannon is a very cynical individual. We don't mean he's living a life like Diogenes of Sinon, okay? So the meaning of it has become twisted around quite a bit. So to mean just people who offend and throw off, alter the currency and deface the current standards and criticize the way people are living without thinking of the deep philosophical basis and thought behind that. Okay, other thoughts about this? So the short wrap is saying the set is doing kind of cultivates virtue to them? Yes, so one thing you want to do is cut off. So the idea is that our nature is actually good. And if we lived according to our human nature that we would be happy. And the animals don't have any choice. They all live according to their own nature. And so they don't have the kinds of misery and depression and so on that we do. Because they just live according to their nature and there's no other way to be. We, however, because of the kind of minds we have can confuse ourselves and can develop habits and ways of acting that actually make us miserable. And make us have large desires and addictions for things that make us miserable. And so in this view, what you need to do is throw off all sources of those things. Now with respect to desire, this is really interesting. Because there's a couple of ways of dealing with desire. Like if you have a desire for a new car or a new house or a boyfriend or a girlfriend or something like that. There's two ways to deal with it. One is to satisfy that desire. To actually earn the money or whatever by the car or the house or earn that person's affection or whatever. Another way is just to eliminate the desire. Stop desiring those things, right? And in Diogenes view, the latter strategy makes way more sense and is way more satisfying and in accordance with our nature. Cuz nothing in our nature says we have to drive sports cars. So we have to sleep with the most beautiful people or anything. In fact, those are totally unnatural things that we've gotten from advertising and that sort of thing. They don't really have anything to do with what human nature is. So, but how are you gonna get rid of those desires? How are you gonna throw off those influences? Well, the first thing, instead of throwing money into the ocean now, like Cradys did, the starting point would be throwing your cell phone into the ocean and saying, first of all, I'm cutting off all of that source of artificiality in my life. But of course, if you don't have a cell phone, you can't function. You can't have a job, you can't practically go to school or anything, right? So now you have to, you can't rent an apartment, right? So you embrace homelessness, okay? Now, some people, I presume the majority of homeless people are homeless, not because it's their choice, but because, like, you can't hardly afford to live in the city, even if you're rich, okay? And so they don't, they would like to have homes, but they don't have homes. But some of them don't want to live in a house. And diogenes didn't want to live in a house, because it's really, you take on a lot of burdens when you own a house, or even are willing to live in one, even rent one, or even couch surfing, even has a lot of burdens. Like you have to do the dishes when the other people whose house you live in come by or they make you wake up at a certain time and get out of the house for a while or something like that. Whereas much less taking on mortgages and debt and so forth in order to own houses. So one way to deal with wanting to have some shelter is to devote your life to having to do massive amounts of work, entering into contracts, dealing with real estate agents, attorneys, renters, landlords, things like that. Another way is to say, forget all of that. I'm just not going to deal with any of that and just live without a home. And so I think some people, this is another interesting thing about cynicism, I think some people are still living according to a cynic philosophy. They don't have bank accounts, they don't own property, they don't even own their own bicycle. They just hot-wire these rental ones that are all over the place or just piece their own together because you don't want the attachments. You don't want all of those responsibilities and you can't live how you want to. If what you value most of all is your freedom, you might think, God, that's not a free way of life, they can't do what they want. But they don't want to have all of these restrictions and rent deadlines and conforming to all these requirements, just forget it. Live in the streets. Yeah, so he would argue to the end that this is a far more tranquil way of life. These people trying to make their mortgage payments and deal with landlords and so forth, it basically ruins the possibility that you could be a tranquil person. You just have to worry about that all the time. Whereas he says, he'll sleep on the stairs of a temple. And so he says, here's the temple dedicated to Zeus. What a nice house the Athenians have built me here. And so he lives in these temples devoted to the gods. He lives in a giant earthenware tub or a jar that's used for storing things that happens to be empty. In other words, like living under the I-5 freeway or something. What a wonderful house the San Diegans have built me right here. Why would I go out and take on a mortgage? Okay, so yes, you'd absolutely say that it's the shortcut to tranquility. There is this longer term thing, but you might not be smart enough to follow it. And you might not have enough time. You might die before you figure out how to live a virtuous life that way. But you want tranquility. Get rid of all of those ambitions about being a high powered attorney or a successful scientist or whatever. Just throw those away and just live according to nature. And the closer you get back to nature, you'll find that that's where the true source of tranquility and happiness is for a human being. It's your natural state that you would be in if you weren't torturing yourself with unnatural stuff, with mere conventions of society. Okay. Excuse me, Jean-Jacques Rousseau also raised the same opinion, doesn't he? Well, you keep asking these questions that the answer to it is, one would need to read thousands of pages of Rousseau in order to answer that. And we haven't read any Rousseau in here. So how can I say that? Now, he has a view, Rousseau has a well known view that essentially we should live naturally and even our system of education and so forth imposes artifices on us that make us miserable and in that sense it is a cynic like view and does show the continuing influence of cynicism.