Diogenes was one of the most controversial philosophers of all time. Here he is pictured above on the left, telling Alexander the Great to politely screw himself.
The man who would become one of the founding fathers of Cynic philosophy was exiled from his hometown of Sinope for debasing the currency. At a loss at what to do next, Diogenes consulted the Oracle, who told him that he should — wait for it, proceed to debase the currency in none other than Athens.
Wisely taking this to mean political rather than financial debasement, Diogenes became a vocal critic of many cultural conventions of the city, speaking out against hypocrisy and moral corruption.
Diogenes believed that there is great virtue in a simple life of poverty and that this virtue is better extolled in action than in theory. He went to extreme lengths to exemplify his ideals and became notorious for his philosophical stunts. Some of them include:
- Living in a jar in the Athenian marketplace
- Eating, defecating and masturbating freely in public
- Crashing Aristotle’s lectures with a plucked chicken
- Carrying around a lamp in…
