Statue of Diogenes the Cynic (Sinop, Turkey)
I don't want to live in a barrel, carry a lamp, masturbate in the market place, or even spit in the faces of the rich (well, maybe sometimes). But, nevertheless, one is repeatedly drawn back to the figure of Diogenes and to Cynicism; a philosophy constructed in direct opposition to Platonic Idealism with its transcendent forms and characterized by Michel Foucault as a courageous method of truth telling, public provocation, and ascetic sovereignty.
I suppose, above all, Diogenes provides us with a model not so much of the good life, or a beautiful existence - he leads a dog's life and is prone to ugly behaviour - but of extreme honesty. Honesty not as a matter of policy, but as something fundamental upon which we can build a distinctive ethics and politics; "connected to the principle of truth-telling ... without shame or fear ... which pushes its courage and boldness to the point that it becomes intolerable insolence" [165].
In other words, Cynicism is a form of punk philosophy and the Cynic can be characterized as a man of parrhesia; a free-speaker, but also someone who can be outspoken and a bit of a loudmouth. Indeed, when asked what was the most attractive virtue in a man, Diogenes replied the ability to speak candidly (without rhetoric or the shadow of a lie).
But Cynicism is more than this, for it also has a decisive relationship to nihilism. That is to say, it's a form of realism, but the relationship it establishes to reality is not one that flatters or augments the latter; rather, it lays it bare (it strips and exposes the world and violently reduces human existence to its material components).
This, according to Foucault, is why artists of the avant-garde have long been attracted to Cynicism and willingly allowed their work to serve as a vehicle for the latter in the modern world, establishing a "polemical relationship of reduction, refusal, and aggression to culture, social norms, values, and aesthetic canons" [188].
We can think of this as both the anti-Platonic and the anti-Aristotelian character of modern art; a Cynical attempt to reveal and speak the truth (regardless of who it offends) and to change the value of the currency ...
See: Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
I suppose, above all, Diogenes provides us with a model not so much of the good life, or a beautiful existence - he leads a dog's life and is prone to ugly behaviour - but of extreme honesty. Honesty not as a matter of policy, but as something fundamental upon which we can build a distinctive ethics and politics; "connected to the principle of truth-telling ... without shame or fear ... which pushes its courage and boldness to the point that it becomes intolerable insolence" [165].
In other words, Cynicism is a form of punk philosophy and the Cynic can be characterized as a man of parrhesia; a free-speaker, but also someone who can be outspoken and a bit of a loudmouth. Indeed, when asked what was the most attractive virtue in a man, Diogenes replied the ability to speak candidly (without rhetoric or the shadow of a lie).
But Cynicism is more than this, for it also has a decisive relationship to nihilism. That is to say, it's a form of realism, but the relationship it establishes to reality is not one that flatters or augments the latter; rather, it lays it bare (it strips and exposes the world and violently reduces human existence to its material components).
This, according to Foucault, is why artists of the avant-garde have long been attracted to Cynicism and willingly allowed their work to serve as a vehicle for the latter in the modern world, establishing a "polemical relationship of reduction, refusal, and aggression to culture, social norms, values, and aesthetic canons" [188].
We can think of this as both the anti-Platonic and the anti-Aristotelian character of modern art; a Cynical attempt to reveal and speak the truth (regardless of who it offends) and to change the value of the currency ...
See: Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
