After Alexander: Diogenes, the Cynics, and a City With No Walls

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Aristotle built an entire ethics on a
citizen fulfilling his nature inside the

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city, whereas Diogenes built one on a life
that had no use for the city whatsoever.

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Both were answers to the same
question: What does progress toward

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a good life actually require?

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And neither man would have
recognized the other answer as

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an answer to progress at all

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Hi, welcome to Notions of Progress,
the show that traces ideas of progress

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from antiquity to the age of AI.

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Over the last two episodes, five
thinkers used Aristotle to ask what a

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human being needs in order to live well.

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And most of them, following Aristotle
himself, assumed that the answer runs

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through the polis, the Greek city-state,
the political community a citizen

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belonged to, voted in, and depended
on for a meaningful life This episode

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opens up a new arc, the Hellenistic
period, the term historians use for

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the roughly two and a half centuries
stretching from Alexander the Great's

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conquest to the, our rise of Rome.

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So this episode begins where the last arc
left off, with Aristotle's own assumption,

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and that asks what happened to it?

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This episode covers Alexander's reign
and what it did to the polis that

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Aristotle had taken for granted, the
range of philosophical movements that

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emerged in the years afterward, and one
of the movements in depth, the Cynics.

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We'll look at their founder, Diogenes
of Sinope, who was a genuinely colorful

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character whose philosophy amounted to
its own answer to the idea of progress.

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So while this episode does not argue that
the reign of Alexander brought about one

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school of philosophy or another, it does
seek to surface the individuals and the

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movements that emerged in this aftermath.

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So as we discussed in previous
episodes, Aristotelian ideas of

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flourishing, eudaimonia, were built
around the notion of the citizen

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and the polis working together.

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So what follows is a documented
transformation in what the polis

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could still offer its citizens
and a range of thinkers, Aristotle

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among them, who each engaged that
transformation in their own way.

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What a good life actually requires
and what happens when the thing it

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was built on stops being reliable
is not a question that remained.

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So Aristotle's entire theory of
human flourishing depended on one

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institution more than any other.

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He argued that a human being is by nature
a political animal, and that a flourishing

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life was barely intelligible outside the
polis, outside the city state, where a

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Greek citizen voted in and depended on.

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So ethics for Aristotle was not
something that worked out alone.

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It was something that was practiced
inside of a political community with

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other citizens over one's lifetime.

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That interrelationship between
flourishing and community is the

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hinge that this episode turns on.

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It begins with one of Aristotle's
own students and a very well-known

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figure, Alexander the Great.

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Now, Aristotle's student went on
to conquer the known world, and

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in doing so, he ended the kind of
political independence the polis at

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its best had offered its citizens.

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Alexander's father, Philip, had spent two
decades unifying Macedon and extending

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its power south into Greece before that.

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So at the Battle of Chaeronea,
Philip's army defeated a coalition of

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Greek city-states, including Athens,
Thebes, and thereby ending organized

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Greek military resistance for good.

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So Ar- Alexander inherited both the army
and the ambition set out on the campaign

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of conquest that carried Macedonian rule
from Greece to Egypt to the edge of India.

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Historian F.W. Walbank documents
what this did to the character

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of Greek political life.

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So this is really important because
this, this historian makes the claim

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that this had a major shift in how Greeks
perceived themselves within the political

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arena, the s- the political sphere.

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Alexander himself, Walbank writes, quote,
"Had grown increasingly authoritarian,"

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and his empire, quote, "Retained only
the faintest links with the Macedonian

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monarchy that had once grown with at
least some accountability to its own

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nobility." So kingship under Alexander
became personal rather than national.

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Loyalty to one man, not to
any inherited political order.

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This integration continued
after Alexander was gone.

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He died in three twenty three B.C.
with no clear successor, and his former

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generals spent the next twenty-five
years fighting each other for control

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of what Alexander had built Wallbank
documents their methods directly.

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They repeatedly proclaimed Greek
freedom as a public slogan while

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actually controlling the cities
through military garrisons.

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So it was kind of like a two-tiered
system here, freedom and autonomy

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that in Wallbank's own words did
not provide control over Greece

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and usually remained mere words.

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So this was very performative.

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The polis that Aristotle had assumed
would anchor his citizens' ethical

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life now existed in some- someone
else's empire far away, and it was also

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defended by someone else's soldiers
with the use of mercenaries, and it

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promised a freedom that rarely arrived.

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Whatever the polis had been for
Aristotle, it was something completely

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different now following Alexander,
and different people responded to that

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difference in very different ways.

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Disintegration of the polis
did not produce one monolithic

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philosophical response.

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No, not at all.

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It produced several, and what
follows is a quick survey of the

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field before this episode narrows
in one figure in particular.

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Zeno of Citium, who arrived in Athens
not long after Alexander's death,

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eventually founded the Stoics, a school
built on the idea that virtue alone is

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sufficient for a good life, regardless of
outcome and regardless of circumstance.

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Another, Epicurus, a near exact
contemporary, he founded a completely

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different school that was built around
friendship, modest pleasure, and

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deliberate withdrawal from public life.

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These were two different responses
in the post-Alexander world.

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Both schools get their own
episodes, and we're gonna

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discuss them later in this arc.

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This episode goes on to the response that
came first, chronologically as well as

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philosophically, the Cynics, founded by a
man who answered the disintegration of the

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polis by rejecting the idea that anyone
needed a polis at all, and that figure was

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Diogenes, a genuinely colorful character.

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His reputation for biting wit was,
according to the sources, entirely

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earned, and whose personality
did as much to found the Cynic

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movement as any doctrine he wrote.

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Diogenes earned the nickname The Dog,
Kynikos in Greek, the origin of Cynic.

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So that's where the word comes
from, because he lived by one

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distinction, nature against
convention, physis against nomos.

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What that translates to is natural
functions, he argued, were proper

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and should be done openly, without
shame, the way a dog does them.

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So he appeared very crude to the folks
during that time, and he looked the part.

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Diogenes lived in a discarded wine
jar, as legends, as legend tells it.

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He walked barefoot in the snow, and he
got on by whatever a beggar's cloak, a

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walking stick, and a knapsack can carry.

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And some Plato, according
to classicist A.A.

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Long, is reported to have summed him
up in three words: "Socrates gone

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mad." He described that life as a
kind of training, not deprivation.

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Diogenes held, according to Professor
Long, that human excellence takes both

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mental and physical exercise, the same
continuous practice that lets flutists

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and athletes excel in their own fields.

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Diogenes is preaching the virtue
of a lived life, a practiced life.

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His own words, preserved by Diogenes,
"Training can prevail over anything."

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Quote, "The actual despising of pleasure
is thoroughly pleasurable when it has

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become habitual." So Diogenes, in part,
spoke about self-denial and discipline.

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He treated the discipline of wanting
nothing as its own kind of contest,

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where he clearly meant to win.

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His wit shows up just as clearly in two
confrontations, as was noted by classicist

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R. Bracht Branham, identifies as the
defining moments of his public life.

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In the first one, against Plato,
philosophy's highest authority at the

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time, and one against Alexander the Great,
the world's greatest political authority.

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So when Plato defined the human being
as a featherless biped, Diogenes is said

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to have plucked a chicken, walked into
Plato's lecture, and announced, "Here

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is Plato's man." When Alexander found
Diogenes at Cor- Corinth and offered him

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anything he wanted, Diogenes asked him
to just please step out of the light.

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Reportedly the only thing he wanted
from the most powerful man alive.

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It's quite quixo- quixotic.

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Alexander is said to have walked
away remarking, "Had I not been

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Alexander, I would have liked to
have been Diogenes." So he s- he

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secretly admired his free spirit.

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The-- This mockery went on further.

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When Alexander himself worshipped as the
god Dionysus, Dia- Diogenes reportedly

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proposed that Alexander in turn be
worshipped as Serapis, which was a

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direct jab at the time The theorist
Brannum reads the Alexander episode

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specifically as the political counterpart
to the confrontation with Plato.

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Proof in both cases that Diogenes needed
nothing from power at all, whether

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it was philosophical or political.

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And Diogenes, unlike his predecessors,
never built a school in any formal sense.

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He left no institution behind him.

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What carried his critique
forward was a person, not a text.

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Crates of Thebes became his most
influential follower and reached

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his own philosophical maturity,
according to classicist A.

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Long, in the years right after Alexander's
death, the same chaotic years the generals

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were fighting over Alexander's empire.

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Crates, in turn, is the direct link to
the next generation A young merchant's

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son named Zeno arrived in Athens around
312 BC, and he asked a bookseller where

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he can find someone like Socrates, and was
pointed toward a man walking past outside.

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"Crates, follow that man," the bookseller
said, according to historian Peter Green.

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Zeno did, and became a Cynic
himself before eventually founding

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his own school, the Stoics.

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Again, this is something we'll
discuss in later episodes.

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Behind the wit and the theatrics
was an actual philosophical claim,

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and specifically one that amounts
to its own idea of progress, and it

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was very distinct from every version
the series has covered so far.

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Classicist Long reads Diogenes' project
as more than eccentricity or performance.

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He sees something much deeper.

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Diogenes' real agenda, Long argues, was
a radical critique of the Greek polis.

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So he saw Diogenes as a very important
and a serious figure, even though he

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couched it in a humorous way, as a
critic of the Greek system directly.

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And Diogenes said as much directly.

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Classicist John Moles points to Diogenes'
own words describing the polis itself as,

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quote, "Against nature." Long identifies
the fuller shape of the critique that

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Di- Diogenes held that wealth, fame,
and political power itself, in his own

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phrase, had no value in nature whatsoever.

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A polis exists in large part to
protect exactly those three things,

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so therein lies the conflict.

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Diogenes, on the other hand,
rejected all three at once.

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But that rejection had a positive
side, not just a negative one.

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Diogenes called himself cosmopolites,
a citizen of the cosmos, not

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just of one small specific city.

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An early globalist, one might argue.

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Classicist John Moles argues against
the longstanding scholarly consensus

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that this claim was purely negative.

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Simply another way of saying
Diogenes belonged nowhere.

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Moles reads it, uh, instead as a
genuine substantive alternative.

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Diogenes was proposing a different site
for belonging together, not just not

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the city, but the whole of humanity,
understood as one shared community.

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So read this way, the Cynic
idea of progress wasn't

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just a rejection of society.

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The Cynic idea of progress does not
abandon the question of how a person

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should live in relation to others.

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Instead, it relocates the question
entirely from citizenship in a

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particular city-state to membership
in a community with no borders at all.

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Historian Peter Green
places that relocation in a

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wider intellectual current.

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The impulse behind Greenargius
did not begin with Diogenes.

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He traces it back over a century to
Pythagoras, the Orphics, and Plato himself

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actually, which is very interesting.

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What Alexander's conquest changed
was not the impulse, but its force.

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In Green's words, "Subjugation of the
Greek city-states to outside control, it

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just simply accelerated and intensified
an already existing process." The Cynics

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did not invent the process of rejecting
the polis, but instead, according

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to Green, they radicalized it at the
exact moment that the polis had the

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least power left to protect anyone.

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So that radicalism echoes directly in
the early work of Zeno of Citium, the

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same young Cynic converted, introduced
above, later the founder of the Stoics.

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His treatise on the ideal state, The
Republic, was shaped so thoroughly by

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Cynic thinking, Professor Green states,
that it was joked to have been written on

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the dog's tail, a statement that points
to the original Cynic himself, Diogenes.

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And Zeno wanted everything that made
up an entirely Greek city, temples,

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courts, gymnasiums, money, local
loyalties, swept entirely away.

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Green calls this, quote, "A frontal
assault on Plato and Aristotle, since

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both of them in their own way built
their ideal ruler around the polis, while

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the Cynics held the polis in contempt."

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Green adds, "Now that its real power
was broken." So ancient critics leveled

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a specific complaint at the Cynics,
claiming that it lacked a telos, a

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stated end, or an ultimate goal, that it
was random, the kind of thing that let

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other schools claim status as a genuine
philosophy rather than a lifestyle.

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So this is important.

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We've discussed telos
in previous episodes.

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It, you know, basically their implication
was, was that this, this particular

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movement had no end goals whatsoever.

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Classicist Brock Branham and Marie
Caves traced that expectation

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itself directly back to Aristotle.

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Philosophical schools only began being
defined by their sovereign good following

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Aristotle's work, the Nicomachean Ethics.

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Diogenes and Antisthenes
never stated one at all.

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It was a later Stoic, Apollodorus of
Solutia, applying to Diogenes and the

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Cynics retroactively after their death
and gave them a telos, interestingly,

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living in accordance with virtue decades
after Diogenes was dead as part of an

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argument linking the Cynics and the
Stoics in one unbroken line to Socrates.

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Diogenes, in other words, never organized
his life around a stated goal at all.

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What he had instead was a practice.

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Much of this section has been
about what the Cynics rejected.

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Well, it's also worth being clear
about what they actually stood for.

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The theorist Long traces
it to self-sufficiency.

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Autarkia achieved through deliberate
training and the same discipline in

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Diogenes' word that lets an athlete
earn a skill Branham identifies a

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second virtue behind both the Plato
and the Alexander confrontations.

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Parrhesia, the freedom to speak the
truth to anyone, regardless of rank.

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Mole adds a third positive
component, cosmopolitanism,

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kinship with all of humanity,
not merely the absence of a city.

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And underneath all three, Long argues,
sits a single standard, living according

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to nature, which is physis over nomos.

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Physis, nature.

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Nomos are just the standards of the,
of the world that you're living in.

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So the same distinction that defined
Diogenes' whole project from the start.

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Now, Aristotle, for his part,
knew of Diogenes directly.

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His own work, Rhetoric, quotes a
joke of Diogenes, naming him only

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as The Dog, the earliest surviving
mention of a Cynic anywhere in

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Greek literature, confirmed by Long.

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So Aristotle built an entire ethics on a
citizen fulfilling his nature inside the

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city, whereas Diogenes built one on a life
that had no use for the city whatsoever.

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Both were answers to the same
question: What does progress toward

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a good life actually require?

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And neither man would have
recognized the other answer as

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an answer to progress at all.

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So the Cynics' departure from Aristotle
was not just a matter of degree.

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Simply stated, Aristotle argued that
flourishing depended, depended directly on

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the polis, on the city-state, and it was
built and sustained by the citizens within

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that city-state who were acting together.

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Now, Diogenes argued the opposite, that
the polis itself was against the laws

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of nature, and that a person needed
nothing from it in order to live well.

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One built an entire ethics around
belonging to a political community,

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Aristotle, while the other built his
around needing no community smaller

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than the entire whole of humanity.

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Between these two positions, there
was no obvious room for compromise.

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They were completely,
they're completely different.

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Now, the Cynics were not the only answer
to the world that Alexander left behind.

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Zeno's Stoics and Epicurus followers were
working out their own answers in the same

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Athenian streets in the same unsettled
decades following Alexander's departure.

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Now, whether the Stoics kept that contempt
once their own school matured or found

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their way back to something closer to
Aristotle's picture is a question that the

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next two episodes will take up directly.

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Epicurus, working on it almost exactly
the same time, will raise a different

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question again, not what a person needs
from the city, but whether a person

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needs the city's business at all.

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What comes next is what two more
schools of thought decided a person

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actually needs, and how close
or how far each of them ended

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up from where Aristotle started.

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Look forward to discussing
this with you the next time.

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Thanks for listening to part one.