KYNICAL PARRHEISIA

The core of every doctrine is what its followers embody of it…But if philosophers are called on to live what they say, their task in a critical sense is much more: to say what they live. Since time immemorial, every ideality must be memorialized and every materiality idealized…To embody a doctrine means to make oneself its medium.
—Peter Sloterdijk The Critique of Cynical Reason


INTRODUCTION
Over the course of this paper I will interrogate thematically the life, the embodied practice and materialist philosophy of Diogenes the Kynic. How did a scandalous and beastial form of life of the Kynic—the wild and tenacious dog—become a mainstay in Ancient Western philosophy? How did Diogenes, who disrespected all formalities and hierarchies, relate to sovereignty? How do the dual conceptualizations of truth as courage and courage as truth—parrhesia—speak to the practice of living central to Kynicsm?
In order to examine such dense theoretical, political and historical assertions, I will examine in depth a number of primary texts, those written by the historians Dio and Diogenes Laertes, along with references to Plato and Aristotle. In terms of secondary literature, in addition to passing references to Peter Sloterdijk, I will offer a close reading of Michel Foucault' final lectures, On The Courage of Truth. These lectures offer us a dynamic and contentious reading of Parrhesia as the courage to speak truth, along with theorizing the relationship Diogenes had to this type of courage. Thus, my intention is to unpack, dynamize and question the relationship between Kynicsm, Truth, Courage, Scandal, Beastiality, and Sovereignty.
DIOGENES
Diogenes the Kynic was born circa 412BCE in Sinope to a father who was a banker who was exiled for adulterating the currency. Diogenes spent most of his days between Athens and Corinth. He was famous for beginning a philosophic tradition called Kynicism, a practice of life that was in harmony with the natural world, as opposed to the cultural world. As such, kynics led simple lives of poverty, and often found themselves grating against the cultural norms associated with the polis. German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk depicts the cultural warrior that Diogenes was in his book The Critique of Cynical Reason:
The ancient world knows the cynic (better:kynic) as a lone owl and as a provocative, stubborn moralist. Diogenes in the tub is the archetype of this figure. In the picture book of social charters he has always appeared as a distance-creating mocker, as a biting and malicious individualist who acts as through he needs nobody and who is loved by nobody because nobody escapes his crude unmasking gaze uninjured. Socially he is an urban figure who maintains the edge of the goings-on of the ancient metropolises. He could be the earliest example of declassed or plebeian intelligence.
The Ancient Kynic is the character who holds an anti-civilizational moral critique, against the gossipers, the academy, and the polis more broadly. He is the dog who bites man and who upholds and affirms the natural world.And yet, kynics were still unique to the urban life, and would not appear if there was not a tremendously dense plebeian population. This plebeian attitude is marked by a cheeky resistance to high cultural capital.
Diogenes is a product of two important cultural themes present in Ancient Athens, the first is poverty—the influence of widespread poverty allowed for the growth of a poor-man's comedy, baseness and vulgarity, three cultural norms which Diogenes' cynicism is dependent upon. The second point to make is that the Ancient Athenian political institution of the 4th Century BCE, Democracy, was marked by the rotating governance of the poor, the valuation of political power for, of and by the plebeians, with its governing telos in the form of freedom are crucial. Ancient Athenian Democracy was what allowed the contusion of kynic life.
As we will unpack over the course of this paper, adherence to freedom and nature, and resistance to culture had made Diogenes the most free of all, from of want or worry, by living by the most bare necessities, sleeping wherever and wearing whatever he pleased. Diogenes is liberated from the requirements of work, leadership and fear that the tyrant is constantly preoccupied with.
THYMOS
Thymos, as a crucial part of the Greek psyche, can be defined broadly as that which motivates spirit, courage, honor, noble action and rage. Thymos has been conceptually relegated to the lapdog of logos, ever since Plato, who argued "Isn't the spirit within him boiling and angry, fighting for what he believes to be just? Won't it endure hunger and cold and the like and keep on till it is victorious, not ceasing from noble actions until he wins, like a dog." Calling thymos doglike very likely has reference to the Platonic traditions first and major resistor, Diagnoses the Kynic. While it can both be said that an erotic reading of Diogenes makes sense and that kynicism had is own logos, for the purpose of reading of thymos as doglike, and also out of broader interest of mine to carve-out a Foucaultian counter-history of rage, courage, honor and spited action, I will maintain a thymotic and thymoresistant reading of Diogenes, in particular his way of subverting tyrants and emperors, Alexander in particular.
The historian Diogenes Laertes captures the famous moment of meeting between Diogenes and Alexander, wherein,"When he was sunning himself in the Craneum, Alexander came and stood before him and said, 'Ask of me any boon you like.' To which Diogenes replied, 'Stand out of my light." This moment thus enacts first, a resistant attitude towards sovereignly as such, a disrespect for formal and institutional authority, and a dishonoring of Alexander, the King of Macedon. Because warrior-kings thrive on thymos, on honor, respect and praise for ones trumps in battle, we can understand the shame that this type of public dishonor. We must also, I argue, read this relationship backwards, and understand, Diagnoses as thymoresistant—displaying the qualities of complete dissensus to the thymotic desires of Alexander. What does Alexander desire from his interaction with Diogenes, recognition, honor, or knowledge? Likely all three. But what Alexander gained from this encounter was different than what he expected—an undemanding and respect for a type of cunning and truthfulness, more courageous than his own. By undermining the recognition and honor Alexander requires, what does Diogenes perform? I stress that Diogenes enacts a counter-hegemonic thymotic spirit—a rebellious and resistant counter-thymos in this dog's disobedient dishonoring of Alexander.
PLATO'S IDEALISM CONTRA DIOGENES' MATERIALISM
The proud, idealist philosopher Plato, and Diogenes, the materialist, have their own struggles and strifes over who the better philosopher was. An infamous anecdote that can help unpack the thymotic struggle between the two can be described as,""And one day when Plato had invited to his house friends coming from Dionysus, Diogenes trampled upon his carpets and said 'I trample upon Plato's vainglory." Diogenes calls attention to the wild hubris he associated with Plato, and the idealist school, with its own wealthy circle of dilettantes, which by all means Diogenes was socially and intellectually excluded from, and therefore opposed to. Once again, this relationship can also be described as an agonistic tension over honors, wherein Diogenes bests Plato, not in a simple thymotic struggle as such, but by dialectically being the better thymoresister, because whereas honor is a convention Diogenes opposes, he gains public support for courageously resisting its pull.
Diogenes and Plato's different philosophical modes provide dissensus between the two. Plato is famous for his pontifications about the forms, an argument based upon the premise that the real thing is not in front of us, but up in the world of Ideals and Logos. Diogenes in many ways, both for courageously living his philosophy, and also for his strong materialist critiques of Plato's form, operates in a materialist dialectic with Plato. As Diogenes Laertes recounts,"As Plato was conversing about Ideas and using the nouns 'tablehood' and 'cuphood,' [Diogenes] said, 'table and cup I see; but your table hood and cuphood, Plato, I can nowise see." Diogenes calls out the real and pragmatic issues with Plato's ideas; that they have no material basis, and that cannot be seen or felt, or related to a vital complex understood, first and foremost, by way of our bodies.
If Plato both called for a rational and philosophical sovereign, in The Republic, and theorized abstractly about the realm of Ideality, then, Diogenes, in resistance, shook apart Plato's thoughts both by being the example of an irrational counter-sovereign beast, via his attunement to eros and thymos over logos—and, more substantially, by bringing the materiality of the world into focus in his own speeches and dialogues on philosophy. Kynicsm is famously the philosophy of not only a materialist worldview, but first and foremost, an embodied and lived philosophical practice.
Diogenes' philosophy can be understood to be concretely material by examining his attack on Plato's popular definition of man as a featherless and bipedal animal. Diogenes plucks a foul, brings it to the seminar and says 'here is Plato's man,' as a multitiered retort to idealism. On the one hand, Diogenes is showing the real limits to the lazy philosophical metaphor here employed by Plato, and on the other hand, instead of using speech to argue with Plato, Diogenes brings in the real, material and vital world of the beast, not only undermining Plato's metaphor, but the entire use of rhetoric and logos in order to define a series of abstract, and to my mind, ultimately unimportant concepts and forms with no real grounds on which they live.
DIO, DIOGENES AND XERXES THE TYRANT
In rhetorician Dio Chrysosthom's Discourse on Tyranny, we see a loving portrait of Diogenes, who's simple life was colored by freedom, happiness and courage. Xerxes, the king of the Persians, who allegedly had the most power, authority and control, lived a life that was marked more deeply by fear and unhappiness than any of his subjects. Dio contrasts the free life of Diogenes and the terrible and unfree life of the tyrant:
The king was, he said, the most miserable man alive, fearing poverty in spite of all his gold, fearing sickness and yet unable to keep away from the things that caused it, in great dread of death and imagining everybody was plotting against him,..So the despot could neither eat with pleasure…nor drown his troubles in wine.
Xerxes, like any tyrant, was constantly beset by the terror of being sabotaged, poisoned, deceived, conned and killed. Xerxes went to great lengths to attempt to preserve himself, by distancing himself from friends and pleasures such as eating. The fear that sovereigns felt was larger than the terror they could have inflicted on his subjects, because a subject well knows their relationships of power and threat usually come from a few and already known sources, i.e. the despot. However, this sovereign in fact has deeper existential threats, known and unknown, from all directions. Having no friends, and instead, being despised by all, the despot has no one, not even his own family, to confide in, and lives a miserable and lonely life.
In a beautiful metaphor, Dio continues this development on the fear and cowardice of the tyrant, saying,"The prisoner in chains expects some time to be set free; it is not impossible for the exile to return to his home…But tyrant may not escape his condition, no, he cannot even so much as pray except it be for something else." If we humans do wrong, we are, after some period of imprisonment or exile, allowed to return after some time to society and our lives. What keeps a prisoner's spirit alive is hope—the crucial fantasy of a life outside prison. However, when the tyrant usurps authority, and becomes illegitimate through the use of force, or by acting outside the law, he has already then carved himself as an exception to the juridical and political forms of institutional legitimacy—making it even harder to return to legitimate rule. This despot, without much hope for returning power without being killed, coupled with the existential threats described above, thus has no future to hope for.
Returning to Diogenes, Dio allows us to understand how courageous and liberating his simple an humble life is:
I, however, says Diogenes, go by night, withersoever I will travel by day unattended, and I am not afraid to go even through an army if need be, without the herald's staff, yea, amid brigands; for I have no enemy, public or private, to block my way…For how much more naked shall I be now, how much more homeless? I shall find al the food I need in apples… on which even the largest of animals can subsist."
We can glean from Dio's discourse, Diogenes lived a life without fear, because, in part, his form of life, as opposed to the despots, allowed him a tremendous amount of social and political freedom. In this way, Diogenes, without any responsibilities or things to keep teak of, lived the happier and better life. Furthermore, as Diogenes stresses most of all that the life of a nomad and beggar allows him to live according to the virtue of courage, never living a moment of fear due to shame or exhaustion, as a result of training and acclimation to cold and hunger. The kynic, intimate with both nature and beasts, is quite well aware how to survive like one.
REVERSAL OF CONVENTIONS
To analyze the way in which the conventions were meaningfully disturbed, we are best able to understand the broader social, political, historical and moral gravity of kynicism. As a proverb about Diogenes goes,"At the curse of tragedy, he used to say, had lighted upon him. At all events he was a homeless exile, to his county dead. A wanderer who begs his daily bread. But he claimed that to fortune that he could oppose courage to convention." In this beautifully constructed passage from Diogenes Laertius, we gain tremendous insight into what the kynical ethics are, which include an adherence to simple living, an appreciation for a radical social non-acceptance, and a privileging of courage over convention.
Diogenes, as a beggar, vagabond and exile is forced into a public but also nonpolitical status as he was a migrant with no political say. In spite of the vast hunger and other physical trails he underwent in his stark opposition to owing a home and laboring on it, Diogenes remained true to his own philosophy of living. From masturbating in the public agora, to preaching to youths to steal from temples, Diogenes's ethics confront, and critique the boundaries of every convention, at the risk of shame, exile and even death, Diogenes overcame all of these fears in order to show and not tell, quite courageously, the way he felt the 'true life' should be lived, as a dialectically materialized and embodied philosophical intervention.
FOUCAULT PARRHESIA
In his final lecture series titled, The Courage of Truth, philosopher Michel Foucault interrogates the Ancient Greek concept and practice, Parrhesia, truth-telling or frank-speech. Foucault describes his project of charting Parrhesia as engaged in the following:
I would like to continue the study of free spokeness, of parrhesia as a mode of truth telling…[analyzing] the conditions and forms of the type of act by which the subject manifests himself when speaking the truth, by which I mean, thinks of himself and is …This principal (epimele sauto: take care of yourself) gave rise, I think, to the development of what could be called a 'culture of the self' in which a whole set of practices of self are formulated, developed, worked out.
Foucault addresses and understands Parrhesia as truth-telling. However, the act of telling the truth is also a practice of subject production, wherein the individual creates themselves as a frank and virtuous parrhesiastes. Like all Foucaultian identifications, this mode of becoming-parrhesiastes is as produced by as many external power-relations (governmental, social, historical…), as much as it relates to the individual. Parrhesia, according both Socrates and Foucault, requires a realm of self-knowledge, self-cultivation described as 'the care of the self,' which incorporates a wold of physical and mental exercises into Ancient philosophical life. The self that tells the real truth they believe, must truly know themselves first—a parrhesia comes first from the 'care of the self.'
Foucault's two most central themes of his inquiry are truth and courage. Foucault understands that,"Parrhesia is the courage of truth in the person who speaks and who, regardless of everything, takes the risk of telling the whole truth." In this sense, as Foucault understood parrhesia as a practice was the courage of speaking the truth to a friend, a tyrant, or the whole polity of a democratic polis, at the risk of shame, exile, imprisonment or death. This discourse or act was produced at the site of bonding between truth and courage.
POLITICAL PARRHESIA
Throughout The Courage of Truth, Foucault excavates the moral and political institutions of parrhesia. It's genesis was as a democratic practice providing the structure to speak freely the truth of some great wight and importance. In this sense, parrhesia always existed between and navigated back and forth from the self and to governmentality.
One example Foucault uncovers is the dangerous relationship between parrhesia and the Democratic city, which, he says, "In democracy, parrhesia is dangerous for the city. It is dangerous for the city because it is the freedom of everyone and anyone to give their views." Parrhesia is dangerous, first of all, because by exposing an important or grave truth, it implies a political and existential threat that the city must respond to. Second, this freedom to express ones views as an act of parrhesia can be employed both for good and for bad, can be helpful and unhelpful, and can even be polyvocal enough to be confused or misunderstood. Continuing with the dangers of parrhesia, Foucault argues, "In democracy, parrhesia is not only dangerous for the city itself, but also for the individual who attempts to exercise it…In a precise passage in the Apology, Socrates refers to this danger for the individual speaking the truth in the democratic space…Consequently, a man who speaks for all these noble reasons opposes the will of al, Socrates says, risks death." The dangers of telling the truth unfold upon the truth-speaker himself. Because parrhesia always necessitates a recipient, a friend, a tyrant, or the whole polity of a city, there is always high risk of disapproval, discomfort, and death. Socrates spoke the truth he needed to speak to the people, and, as the very people who he spoke against were those in with the decision making power, the polity sentenced Socrates to death.
The complications of political parrhesia force us to ask, how can we determine between the various qualities and intentions of parrhesia? How can we know the good from the bad; the truthful from the untruthful in a world of democratic polyvocal acts of free-speech?I would argue that one can look to the context for and outcomes of parrhesia. Socrates's dissensual attack on religion and politics in his final Apology sets the bar for a good and important courageous act of truth-telling, from which other attempts of parrhesia can be compared.
The question of political and other forms of parrhesia arise also within the realm of tyranny, between a tyrant and a subject or advisor. This type of parrhesia is difficult because of the tendency to need to flatter a tyrant and soften the truth in order to remain on his good side. On this note, Foucault understands that, "The idea that parrhesia is always risky with the Prince, may always fail, may always encounter unfavorable circumstances, but is not always in itself impossible," can be seen better in the case of Alexander and Diogenes. Alexander, as the King of Macedonia, is unsure of the reasons why he is not returned with flattery, but pure agonistic and thymoresistant attitudes from Diogenes. As Dio describes the moment after Diogenes demands to remain in the sun, "Now, Alexander was at once delighted with the man's boldness and composure in not being awestruck in his presence. For it is somehow natural for the courageous to love the courageous." Bizarrely, instead of returning insults or having Diogenes killed, instead gains a tremendous amount of respect for him for his frankness—Diogenes's quality of parrhesia.
To understand why Alexander listened to Diogenes, we must turn again to Foucault, who says, "What makes truth-telling with the Prince possible, desirable, and even necessary is that the way he governs the city depends on his ethos." The sovereign's ethical and moral attitude has to be open and generous to invite dissent. Therefore, Alexanders open ethos, coupled with the respect he gained for Diogenes through the agonistic and thymotic struggle, allowed him to recognize and respect the urge towards parrhesia.
KYNIC PARRHESIA
However, political parrhesia can be limited in scope, and to understand more accurately what Diogenes and kynicism were, we need to understand what part ethical parrhesia played in antiquity. Foucault understands this ethical parrhesia as, "Not a question of technique…It is a question—of the way in which one lives." Parrhesia is not a technique or particular practice one understands by convection. Instead, parrhesia is a the very mode of living ones life courageously, without fear. For parrhesia to be ethical, one must not only speak truth, but one must also live this true life, boldly, and at risk of public disproval.
Kynicism has its own way of relating to parrhesia; if kynicism is a lived and embodied philosophy, then, it necessarily was a courageously ethical practice of the true life. On the theme of kynic parrhesia, Foucault asserts, "Cynicism appears to me, therefor, to be a form of philosophy in which mode of life and truth-telling are directly and immediately linked to each other." Kynical brash boldness is the connective-tissue by which truth and life are connected—true living is necessarily understood by the public stripping bare of excessive niceties and flatteries; here we understand the truth, the authentic aim of life of kynics is to live according to the virtues that allow one to be naked, courageous and free. Kynicism, as alethes bios or true-life, is an ontological and ethical call which demands philosophy to be life and life to be truth.Therefor, kynicism is always engaged in the practice of alethurgy—in the production and dissemination of truth-discourses. Frankness can be understood as,"Being asked what was the most beautiful thing in the wold, he replied, 'Freedom of Speech." Thus, that which Diogenes valued highest was frankness—a vulgar and even plebeian sincerity. To live and enact this truthfulness and frankness to its fullest extent, to be a parrhesiastes takes authentic courage.
KYNIC SCANDAL
Kynicism proliferated in the realm of scandal, the world of beastial gestures which was the central language of kynic parrhesia. Sloterdijk understands this scandalous truth and says,"Greek kynicism discovers the animal body in the human and its gestures; it develops a pantomimic materialism…Since, however, kynicism has made speaking the truth dependent on the features of courage, cheekiness and risk, the process of truth gets caught in a previously unknown moral tension: I call it the dialectic of disinhibition." Diogenes the parrhesiastes produced a body of embodied and philosophies, which were subversive, subjugated and counter-hegemonic knowledges of the bodily, natural and material worlds. As embodied and material philosophies, these ran against the whole of the 'high theory' of Plato's project of ideality and logos.
Diogenes' life was a life of public scandal, a life which, in the Nietzschean sense, actively questioning and unraveling all forms of convention in broad daylight. Accordingly, Foucault says, "Cynic courage of truth consists in getting people to condemn, reject, despise, and insult the very manifestations of what they accept, claim to accept at the level of principals." Kynicism risks public shame in order to ironize the failures of social codes and formulates. Furthermore, kynics are successful in the degree to which they convert others to their line of critical attack. Scandal was also connected to poverty, as a vow against wealth, reduction of property to a bare minimum, and homelessness, which inevitably created major friction in the agora—Athenians could not help but watch, debate or engage the dirty public scandal that was Diogenes.
Diogenes was a truth-teller in his resistance to convention, sovereignty and Platonic pontifications. Diogenes lived a dangerous life because of his readiness for physical overexposure and was also thymoresistant with by creating a public scandal with Athen's darling philosopher Plato. If Socrates is the father, then the first-born son and heir is Plato, the philosopher-tyrant, and Diogenes is the bastard son, born into democracy, which still is not free enough. In his striving for freedom, Diogenes, the courageous parrhesiastes could have been, at any point, killed, exiled, or died because of exposure to cold, wind, illness.
KYNIC SELF-SOVEREIGN
Towards the end of The Courage of Truth, Foucault makes a crucial claim that cynic life is the exercise of sovereignty over oneself—sovereign in the sense that one clams to be politically autonomous in remaining apolitical with regards to democracy and political kingship. Foucault understands tension between kynics and sovereignty:
The cynic is the is the only true king. And at the same time, vis-a-vis kings of the wold, crowned kings sitting on their thrones, he is the anti-king who shows how hollow, illusory and precarious the monarchy of kings is.
Kynical kingdom comes from abstention, wisdom and the practice of parrhesia. Political parrhesia in this sense, by thinking itself true, right and authority, quite dynamically rupture and undermine what the political kings and monarchs claim as legitimate grounds to rule. Turning back to the debate between Diogenes and Alexander, the latter makes, as his grounds for kingship, the wars he's won, the heritage he claims from both his father, Phillip the king of Macedon, and even the king of gods, Zeus. However during a debate over kingship as Dio recalls, "And Alexander said: 'Apparently you do not even hold even the Great King to be a king, do you?' And Diogenes with a smile replied, 'No more, Alexander, than I do with my little finger." This short episode plays out the entire logic of kynical parrhesia—the truth is, titles of kingship do not display truly kingly qualities, which for Diogenes are reserve, sincerity, wisdom and maybe even modesty. Diogenes eventually wins this agonistic debate, and Alexander thus learns the lesson of the virtue of political parrhesia. More beautiful than my description of the events between Alexander and Diogenes is Foucault's:
There is total dissymmetry, since facing Alexander in all his glory, Diogenes is the wretch in his barrel. But Alexander displays his true greatness and shows that he could be close to what truly makes a king in the fact that when he meets Diogenes he does not rely on the splendor of his glory and this armed strength for authority. He meets Diogenes face to face…And the dialogue stage makes this confrontation in order to that the person who thinks he is king is not the true king. The true king is, of course, Diogenes.
The battle is between the philosophical king and the political king. As we noticed above from Dio's account of their agnostic battle, the battle is between strength and wisdom. In a competition over who triumphed over their enemies, Alexander boasts about al the rivals he has crushed, and Diogenes reminds him, in an act of parrhesia, that a king needs to first worry among dissent in his own city and his among his own ranks.This political metaphor of the need to think of one's internal problems is also a psychological metaphor—exposing the demons Alexander has not grappled with: pride, vainglory, and ambition. Diogenes has the wisdom and acuity to live a true life is a better ruler over himself, and by extent in, would be the better king.
This notion of the Kynic as true king problematizes sovereignty at its core. If Diogenes is the true king by virtue of wisdom, courage, and by knowing and living the true life, then how can there be another (Alexander's) claim to sovereignty? If Diogenes is an anti-sovereign sovereign, does this make him a sovereign outside of law? The tension lies over the juridical realms of sovereignty; Alexander is king over political rights and civl law, whereas the antisocial beast, Diogenes is the king of natural rights and laws. Thus, how can a dog be sovereign?
TOWARDS A CONCLUSION: BESTIALITY AND ZOON POLITIKON,
Moving towards a moment of synthesis, how might we understand the way an embodied and bodily philosophy of scandal, organic and of the organs (a philosophy articulated by farts, masturbation and bites), may cohere with the other loose threads of materialism, the kynical anti-sovereign sovereign, and thymoresistance? The connective tissue, in my mind, will be seen here as beastiality, which Diogenes has always been accused of. Kynicism's namesake is the dog, which Diogenes earned at a party. Diogenes responding to the wealthy men throwing him a bone to insult him, and responding by bitting them is more than getting his namesake as kynic, but also a process of a strange interpolation to be a beast, which Diogenes accepts. A becoming-dog—but also a blurring and troubling of distinctions between man and animal.
To best understand the relationship of shame, baseness and materiality, we need to unpack this concept of beastiality. Why was Diogenes given the name Kynic, or dog? Foucault understands animality in the following way, "The kunikos life is a dog life without modesty, shame and human respect. It is a life which does in public, in front of everyone, what only dogs and animals dare to do, and which usually men hide…a life which barks a diacritical life, that is to say, a life which fights." Kynic life presumes a strong critique of human values, a life that materially and socially struggles, affirmation of animality and naturalistic (bare) living.This bare animalistic life is marked by the scandal of courage—to do that which other men fear.
Towards a scandalous-materialist reading, we already have uncovered the theme of Diogenes as a dialectical materialist in his public opposition to Plato's idealist theories. However, to comprehend the context around what Diogenes was doing is to understand that masturbating in public and living naked in a tub is a reflection of a desire to actualize a philosophy of true life. His gesticulated dog-behavior can thus be understood as a logical extension of the lived, embodied, bodily and materialist trope key to kynical philosophy.
Thymos, as articulated at the beginning of this paper was, as attributed by Plato, the part of the soul courageously engaged in noble action and rage, the determined type of courage that does not give up, like a dog, until it wins. This tenacity is the very substance of kynic life. Recalling the affair between Alexander and Diogenes, we are able to understand the (thymo)resistant attitude of disrespect and dishonor for the political king as a classical question of the constant struggle between sovereigns who make law and the beasts who break it.
Further complicating the relationship between animality and sovereignty is the Foucaultian assertion kynical life as sovereign life forces us ask, is Diogenes apolitical beast or is he an alternative political animal? Turning to Sloterdijk helps us to uncover this complex question of how Diogenes problematizes and expands our onto-political framework for question as zoon politikon:
Diogenes the 'political animal.' The expression 'animal' is to be taken more literally than the translation of zoon as 'living beings' allows…Political animal: This term outlines the platform of an existential anti-politics. Diogenes, the shameless political animal, loves life and demands a natural, not exaggerated, but honorable place for the animal side…Diogenes died by holding his breath, which of course would be an excellent proof of his superiority in living as dying."
The Ancient Greek word for political being, zoon politikon, implies a number of important points, the first is that humans, by nature and by ontology, are political beings, a priori. Secondly, the division between zoon politikon and zoe is an ontological, political and moral distinction between man and animal. Sloterdijk makes the animalistic leap in describing Diogenes as a beast so animalistic in his urges that he is against the polis and civilized culture—an anti-political creature. And yet, as we have seen throughout primary and secondary literature about Diogenes, he in his beastial behavior is not an animal, but is a blurring of the categories of man and beast. The next principle to towards an argument for indistinction is that there exist animal instincts by which our political being is motivated: competition, loyalty, courage,and rage.
But, is Diogenes, as Sloterdijk asserts, a zoon politikon in the sense of his politicization of the animal itself, by deterritorializing the moral, ontological and moral boundaries between man and beast? I would argue that yes, any contestations of the ontological and political borders of humanness as such is inherently political. Continuing this logic, Diogenes, by being pointed out, thymotically recognized by the sovereignty of Alexander future proves that the kynic's subversive behavior is, as a continual dialogue with power, continuously political. I will argue this point further, that begin an anti-political anarchist—a man not ruled by the external and coercive forces of the polis and thereby a self-sovereign—is in fact is the most political poison to take, along with being the position of the true-king.
Diogenes is caught within a political dialectic of sovereignty. Who, thus is sovereign, the one who makes the rules, or the one who breaks them? And if the tyrant is the most brutal beast of all, where then does this place the kynic? Both the tyrant and the kynic are outside the realm of normal arrangements of law and norms—beastial exceptions to the realm of man. And in this move, we also see the need for association various qualities to these beasts, in order to differentiate them. The tyrant is aggressive and violent out of the fear for his life. The kynic is wise and courageous. The tyrant is hated by man, while the kynic is loved by man and, as a dog, is man's best friend. Aside from these qualitative differences of who might live the better life who was Diogenes, we must ask which is the best life as extra-social characters? If the tyrant finds himself in the post-political and extralegal realm out of a selfish grab for power, then, by contrast, the kynic finds himself in the realm of beasts in his search for the truth—the truth of the courageous life. Not only is Diogenes then lives in accordance with nature for the right reasons, but also he does so courageously, and still maintains the support of the people of Athens.
In leu of delving into the pandora's box of literary and political references that unpacking Derrida's Beast and the Sovereign, would require, I will just throw out a few open ended questions to answer in greater detail another day. What does the opposition between the lived/ embodied version of kynicsm and the discourse and law producing realm of sovereignty imply? How might we connect the terrifying silence of a pa de loup to the kynic? A pa de loup is the stealthy step of the wolf. This step is not only silent, but precise, unnoticed, invisible until the attack—unannounced and terrifying—a radically materialist and non-discursive extra-juridical beast. Is kynicism this terrifying beast? Perhaps, to some degree Diogenes would have liked to have been born a stealthy wolf—but he is still human and recognized by sovereignty and humanity as such. Unless we see read the powerful and timeless myths of kings and wolves, of wolf-kings and king-wolves as the realm of allowing a wolf to have a discourse, we will still find kynics far closer to speech-production than humans.
We are better equipped to examine this relationship between sovereignty and nomads/ (a)political beings by interrogating discourse and silence. Being a nomad, like Diogenes, means that one is a citizen of nowhere, or a citizen of the world in Diogenes' case. The lived position of the exiled, the deterritorializing cosmopolitan has ontological and political ramifications. The non-citizen, which included slaves, women, barbarians, the exiled, and beasts, are not allowed to participate in politics, and have no power within the polis to create political speech. This originates from the from Aristotle, who in the Politics says, "And why man is a political animal in a greater measure than any bee or any gregarious animals clear…man alone of the animals possesses speech." The Aristotelian measure for political organization, which sets man above other creatures, is our capacity for speech. Discourse produces humans, and also makes man a political human. The capacity for speech, which is a speciesist, racist and ontological assertion also describes the ontological reason for not including slaves, women, animals or the exiled in the demos, or in Democracy, as they do not have the capacity to produce logical or purposive speech. This argument stems from the historical fact that most slaves were from other parts of the Mediterranean than the city they were brought to, and either spoke a different dialect of Greek or another language all together. And yet, the very idea that there are major perceived ontological, juridical, and political differences between the elite and the most marginalized is a framing of the human that still haunts us today.
Perhaps what makes Diogenes truths so profoundly affective as the fact that they operate outside of the political logos of Democracy. His acts as a parrhesiastes are encoded in his non-political status, and then they redouble their force in the audacity of a migrant nomad with no political or juridical right to speak, and yet he speaks, directly and politically, to Alexander. This is where the force of a pa de loup comes into play—the kynic's advantage is the stealth provided by his capacity to blend in with the commoners, the plebs and the rabble. And from this seemingly innocuous and apolitical position, the wolf barks and bites—taking the courageous political assault to sovereignty.
How can parrhesia, as a practice of speaking or telling the truth relate to an embodied and beastial philosophy that, among many things, did not hold writing discourses that high? How does parrhesia transform when it moves from speech to action? Does all parrhesia have to be discursive? Thinking about the theoretical implications of the relationship between Platonic authorship and Diogenes' embodied and beastly makes me think that, in large part, kynicism is located in a post-discursive parrhesia. If true life, in accordance with philosophy, is kynic parrhesia, then the question arises about how parrhesia is, in comparison to the Apology, is kynic free speech if speech is not held as highly, for Diogenes, as action?
This leads us to the final question of how much liberty does Foucault take in his particular and coded re-reading of the act of free-speech in a political sphere to thinking truth and courage as they expand outside of Democracy, in the case of Diogenes? Quite a lot. If we take his theoretical assertions as historical assertions, as Foucault would have us do, there seem to be legal, political and social misreading offered to us in The Courage of Truth, about how much beyond the formal Democratic call for free speech would have been named parrhesia. However, I still feel that Foucault's assertions about ancient truth and courage are quite interesting and insightful insofar as these were virtues, and insofar as courage and truth-telling are accurate to a reading of ancient kynicism.
Kynic parrhesia is the courage to live like a beast with no shame and no fear in the bodily and embodied materialist praxis of philosophy. Not only courage, but also the capacity to speak political truths to power from the standpoint of the stealthy wolf, the courageous dog and the apolitical migrant. How does the dangerous lived practice of parrhesia relate to the beast and also how does it relate to the thymoresistant? The risk to take on, to challenge and to resist the physical discomforts, social conventions and sovereignty is the very nature of kynical life—the life of that animal which bites and barks and is always thymoresistantly disobedient.This ethical and embodied disobedience, in some strange ironical turn, is in fact the very grounds for the practice of the true king. It is only though breaking every rule that we know how and why there are rules, and that we are free to decide for ourselves what is right or not to do with our life. In this way, the kynic is sovereign, but by way of an animal, beastial and natural sovereign. If Diogenes lives outside the law, outside of nomos and the politics of the polis, he is thus creating new rules, new and courageous ways of life.




Dio Chrysosthom. Discourses 1-1I. Ed. Jeffery Henderson. Trans. J. W. Cohoon, Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1932. 245.
Sloterdijk, Peter. Critique of Cynical Reason. Trans. Michael Edred. Minneapolis: U Minnesota Press, 1987. 3-4.
Plato. Complete Works. Ed. John Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997. Rep., 1072.
Diogenes Laertes. Lives of Eminent Philosophers Vol II. Ed. Jeffery Henderson. Trans. R. D. Hicks. Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1925.41.
Ibid., 27-29.
Ibid., 55.
Ibid., 43.
Dio, 269.
Ibid., 271.
Ibid., 281-283.
Diogenes Laertes, 39-41.
Foucault, Michel. The Truth of Courage: The Government of Self and Others II. Lectures at Collège de France 1983-1984. Ed. Frédéric Gros. Trans. Graham Burhcel. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 2-5.
Ibid., 13.
Ibid., 36.
Ibid.. 36-37.
Ibid., 62.
Dio, 175.
Foucault, 63.
Ibid., 144.
Ibid., 166.
Diogenes Laertes, 71.
Sloterdijk, 103.
Foucault, 234.
Ibid., 275.
Dio, 189.
Foucault, 276.
Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes. Trans. Robin Hard. Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2012. x.
Foucault, 243.
Sloterdijk, 167.
Aristotle. Politics. Trans. H Rackham. Ed. Jeffery Henderson. Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1911. 1.1.10.

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