DIOGENES OF SINOPE

(c. 400–325 BC)

The founder of the Cynics, Diogenes lived in Athens and perhaps Corinth. He may have been taught by Antisthenes, but it was his life and influence that gave the Cynics their importance. He taught that the right way of life was to have the simplest possible needs and to satisfy them in the most direct way. In particular, whatever is natural is honourable and decent, and can therefore be done in public without any shame. Conventions contrary to this openness should be ignored. The ethic is not just one of self-sufficiency, but more one of self-mastery born of a healthy contempt for one's own pleasures and pains, and especially born of impatience with the conventions and hierarchies of a presumably corrupt society: ‘Aristotle breakfasts when it pleases the king; Diogenes, when it pleases Diogenes.’