HOW TO SAY NO
Diogenes and the Cynics
Selected and translated by M.D.Usher
Princeton
Nay-sayers tend to be outsiders. The Cynics, Diogenes, who lived in the 4th
century BC, chief among them, were ever willing to face down received
wisdom, which doesn’t mean their behaviour was always impeccable. Diogenes
was famous for masturbating in public, a demonstration of his recognition of
the naturalness of our basic needs. Also, unfortunately, a failure to
recognise the right of others not to be offended. Quite how he thought women
and children should respond to his habit seems not to be known. However, as
authoritarianism advances across the globe, it’s heartening to read the work
of ancients who believed in the right to say no, to question conformism, to
make authority account for itself, as it always must.
When Diogenes stood before Alexander who declared, “I am Alexander the
Great,” Diogenes replied, “And I am Diogenes the dog.” What better response
to the pomposity of power? He declared he called himself a dog because “I
fawn on those who give, I bark at those who don’t and I bite scoundrels.” He
liked to wander around in the daylight with a lamp saying, “I’m looking for
a human being.” Part comedian, part philosopher, he dealt in brief
witticisms. Everyone knows he lived in a barrel. Frugality was a Cynic
principle. They associated it with virtue as extravagance with vice. That
might be too simplistic, in that enforced frugality may be no indication of
virtue. Yet they are probably on the right track in seeing that chosen
frugality is indicative of an unassuming way of life compatible with
justice. The Cynics’ essential belief is that we should live according to
the demands of virtue, in keeping with the will of the gods. Another way of
putting this is that we should live according to our given nature; the
problem, of course, is defining it. Yet it seems clear we have lost touch
with ourselves as we drive towards making the planet uninhabitable.
Frugality and modesty seem positive suggestions given extravagance and
arrogance have brought us to a pretty pass.
Seneca writing of Demetrius points out his principle that it is better to
hold a few philosophical principles put to good use rather to have absorbed
many arguments which you don’t have to hand. Frugality for the Cynics
included the intellect. Demetrius’s insight chimes with science’s view that
a few essential principles can explain complex phenomena. Galileo pointed
out that nature never does anything in a complex way which it can do simply,
which makes the search for underlying principles a core intellectual
activity. Demetrius also believed what will make us happy and better people
is in plain view and close by. Our essential needs are simple and relatively
easily satisfied. In societies organised around the pursuit of material
wealth, this can be expressed in sickly sentimentality, but its correct: we
all need shelter from the elements but no one needs a palace; we all need to
feed ourselves adequately but no one needs to stuff themselves like Atilla
or Henry VIII.
The base, in Demetrius’s view “however resplendent in riches they might be”
are, because lacking in honesty, “the most wretched of human beings.”
Honesty is the only goodness and baseness the only bad. Tell that to Donald
Trump, Netanyahu or Vladimir Putin, or for that matter the super-rich who
measure virtue in dollars. Of course, there was corruption in Demetrius’s
time, but at least philosophers were willing to set their faces against it.
Never mind the census, says Demetrius, never mind whether it puts you among
the richest, it’s the greatness of your mind that matters. What he measn by
this Is not that everyone should try to be an intellectual. By greatness of
mind he doesn’t intend intellectual accomplishment. Rather, it’s a condition
available to all. Everyone can be an honest and noble person. To be a person
of character is what matters, not to be a person of wealth or status.
What are profit, interest, ledgers, invoices, account books, all the
paraphernalia of money-making? They are “evils sprung from our choice and
our dispositions.” Somewhat different from the proposition that “the free
market” or “the market mechanism” determines these things. That’s what
Shakespeare called “a worthy evasion of whoremaster man”. “The way that I
own everything,” says Demetrius, “results in everything belonging to all.”
He isn’t thinking of material wealth but of virtue and wisdom. Caligula
offered Demetrius two hundred thousand sesterces, at which the latter
laughed and refused them. Not even the whole Empire would have tempted him.
Lucian, writing of Demonax, says that he “was prompted even in childhood by
a natural inclination toward goodness.” He didn’t require the teaching of
great philosophers to guide him, his guide was, if you like, innate. The
question of whether we have an innate moral sense is vexed, yet there’s
convincing evidence in the runaway train problems and ingenious, simple
tests of that ilk, that we do have a pre-cultural, biologically endowed
moral sense. If we didn’t, how would we have any moral sense at all? It
would be like expecting us to have vision without a biologically endowed
visual system. The notion that culture alone could provide us with vision is
absurd. Equally, the notion that culture alone can provide us with a moral
sense. Presumably, some have a more acute moral sense than others, but that
we share a common basic moral faculty looks as uncontroversial as our
sharing a language faculty. In this view, Demonax is merely a particularly
fine example of what is true of us all.
It was Demonax’s habit to condemn sins but to forgive the sinner. The
distinction permits us to see faults as amenable to rectification rather
than as fixed defects. There are many languishing in prison at great cost to
both us and them who might be leading useful lives if Demonax’s perspective
were taken seriously.
Onesicritus, one of Alexander’s helmsmen, in conversation with a gymnosophist (a naked Indian philosopher) is told the best house is that which needs the least maintenance, something we would all agree with when the roof leaks. Mandanis, the gymnosophist, argued that Cynics paid too much attention to custom and not enough to nature. Time and again the Cynics return to the idea that living in consonance with nature is the route to virtue and happiness. Kynikos argued that people prefer a life of “trouble and woe” as they search for the things they believe will make them happy: wealth and power. The Cynics aren’t naïve. They understand we are easily tempted away from what genuinely serves and can easily worship false gods; but their insistence on finding the good life in frugality, wisdom, in resisting the blandishments of corrupt systems, is a tonic given what’s in the news every day.
Usher has made an excellent selection and his introductions to each chapter
are enlightening for the reader unfamiliar with the territory. This is a
fascinating addition to the splendid series of which it’s a part. Someone
should send Trump a copy.