Diogenes of Sinope

Life and thought

Diogenes was born in Sinope on the Black Sea and left it in disgrace, probably after a scandal over the city’s coinage in which his father, a money-changer, was implicated. He spent most of his life in Athens and Corinth, living in public as a beggar, sleeping in a large storage jar (pithos) and owning almost nothing. Writings were later attributed to him, but none survives; he is known through anecdotes collected centuries later, above all by Diogenes Laertius.

The anecdotes are a philosophy acted out. Nature, not convention, sets what we need, and very little is needed: seeing a child drink from its hands, he threw away his cup. Shame and status are human inventions, so he ate, argued and slept in the street. Asked where he came from, he said he was a citizen of the world (kosmopolitēs). He called his mission “defacing the currency”, an echo of the Sinope scandal and a programme: strip away false values. The Stoics took up his self-sufficiency and cosmopolitanism, in milder form.