Diogenes, Mentor

Abstract

Diogenes chided philosophers for the discrepancy between their teachings and their lives, and surely no one lived his beliefs in a more uncompromising manner than he did. Diogenes’s exhibitionism and his propensity for taking and giving offense are regarded by some as childish and motivated by a desire for fame, but by others as an ideal form of pure commitment. As a teacher, he eschewed the usual methods of instruction, though he is credited with many works of poetry and philosophy, perhaps none of greater consequence than his Republic. Its doctrines were deeply influential among early Stoics and still resonate in contemporary discussions of cosmopolitanism, feminist politics, free speech, et cetera. In antiquity, philosophers’ deaths were taken to be emblematic of their lives, and the various versions of Diogenes’s end reflect the continuing disputes about his conception of a good life.