Diogenes of Sinope (404-323 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher, but accepted as such in a scurrilous and disparaging way by contemporary accounts, chiefly tby Diogenes Laertius, biographer of philosophers. Diogenes is the founder of Cynicism, dubbed by Plato himself “a Socrates gone mad.” The word “cynic” is derived from the Greek word kyōn (κύων), meaning “dog.” Diogenes Laertius calls Diogenes a dog because the latter “used any place for any purpose, for breakfasting, sleeping, or conversing.” He famously slept in a barrel or tub and pursued bodily functions outdoors. He harangued against other philosophers, especially Plato with his proposed Republic, an idealized and contrived social order and suppressive society run by elites. Diogenes harangued street passersby as well, famously pursuing them at night to stick a lantern in their faces to deny that they were intelligent, since no intelligent person would pursue night-life. Yet Akexander the Great respected him. In a famous anecdote, Alexander passes by with his retinue, stops and alights from his horse to converse with Diogenes, who is sitting on the roadside. “What is it you want, Diogenes?” Alexander asks, hoping to provoke a conversation. “For you to move,” replies Diogenes. “You are blocking the sunlight.” Plutarch reports that Alexander turned and told his retinue: “If I were not Alexander, I should like to be Diogenes.”
One may think of Diogenes as an extended philospoher using the Socratic method more radically than Socrates, and disposing of Plato’s abstractions without qualms,or as a hermit in the full sense of a sadhu, a gymnosophist, a “fool” found in the early Christian tradition, or, finally, as a prototype modern urban hermit.