I found myself in a flat spin when asked about the most fascinating/ interesting chearacter that I thought ever existed in the entire history of thinkers. Obviously, the thinkers sanctioned by the Divine Will didn’t count. An instantaneous response could be naming one of the sufis like Rumi or Shams Tabriz but such people incur reverence instead of admiration or fascination.

Prophets, saints and sufis and the aura they epitomise, call for a formalised relationship. The entertainment of fascination for someone necessitates traits that are usually associated with an ordinary (fallible) human. Thus, I sought refuge in taking my pick from the Western tradition of thinkers and philosophers.

The challenge still remained as Jacque Rosseau, Voltaire, Karl Marx, Frederick Nietzsche, Jean Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault being serious contenders. Even Slavoj Zizek could not be ruled out. All of them were mavericks and didn’t flinch from mounting a serious challenge to the existing patterns of thought.

Nietzsche had the gall even to pronounce death of God. My all-time favourite has been Fyodor Dostoevsky. Had he not been there, the contours of the disciplines of psychology and philosophy would have been markedly different. It needed extraordinary talent to write Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov, and his novella Notes from Underground.

Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as several of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.

Notes from Underground is considered one of the first works of existentialist literature; this has resulted in Dostoevsky being looked upon as both a philosopher and theologian. But then I find him far too big to hold any opinion about him other than profound reverence.

That leaves only one figure out. He is usually mentioned as a footnote to philosophy or treated as someone not deserving any serious consideration. He is Diogenes of Sinope. Later, he acquired the title ‘the Cynic’. Diogenes was born in Sinope, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia in 404 BC to a banker and died at Corinth in 323 BC.

After being exiled because of financial problems that had beset his native town, he moved to Athens where he had the repute of a socio-cultural critic. He modelled himself on the example of Heracles and believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. He used his simple lifestyle and behaviour to criticise the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt, confused society.

He had a reputation for sleeping and eating wherever he chose in a highly non-traditional fashion. He took to toughening himself against nature. Diogenes maintained that all artificiality in society was incompatible with happiness and that moral conduct required a return to the simplicity of Nature.

So great was his austerity and simplicity that the Stoics would later claim him to be a wise man or “Sophos”. In his words, “Humans have complicated every simple gift of the gods.” The word “Cynic”, in fact, derives from the ancient Greek word for “dog-like”. When he was asked why he was called a dog, he replied: ...Diogenes also took after the dog in one other respect — his complete lack of embarrassment over performing bodily functions in public.

Although Socrates had previously identified himself as belonging to the world, rather than a city, Diogenes is credited with the first known use of the word “cosmopolitan”. When he was asked from where he came, he replied, “I am a citizen of the world (cosmopolites).” This was a radical claim in an epoch where a man’s identity was intimately tied to his citizenship of a particular city-state. There are many tales about his dogging Antisthenes’ footsteps (who was his teacher and treated him brutally) and becoming his “faithful hound”.

He accustomed himself to the weather by living in a clay wine jar belonging to the temple of Cybele. He destroyed the single wooden bowl he possessed on seeing a peasant boy drink from the hollow of his hands. He then exclaimed: “Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!” He passed his philosophy of Cynicism to Crates, who taught it to Zeno of Citium, who fashioned it into the school of Stoicism, one of the most enduring schools of Greek philosophy.

He always represented the voice of an individual as distinct from the collective. Contrary to the long-held Athenian customs he went on to eat in the marketplace. When rebuked, he explained that it was during the time he was in the marketplace that he felt hungry. He used to stroll about in full daylight with a lamp; when asked what he was doing, he would answer, “I am looking for a man.” (Modern sources often say that Diogenes was looking for an “honest man”, but in ancient sources he is simply “looking for a man”.

It was in Corinth, where Diogenes spent his last days, that a famous meeting between the two opposites took place, Alexander the Great and Diogenes. The story may be apocryphal but it is extremely fascinating. The accounts of Plutarch and Diogenes Laërtius recount that: while Diogenes was relaxing in the morning sunlight, Alexander, thrilled to meet the famous philosopher, asked if there was any favour he might do for him. Diogenes replied, “Yes, stand out of my sunlight.” Alexander then declared, “If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes.” “If I were not Diogenes, I would still wish to be Diogenes,” Diogenes replied.

Earlier in the same meeting as Epictetus notes in his Discourses, at the time of the encounter in Corinth, Diogenes was asleep when Alexander approached. Alexander, who was an enthusiastic reader of the Iliad, is said to have quoted a line spoken by the divine Dream to Agamemnon: “To sleep the whole night through ill befits a man of counsel.” Diogenes, awakening, countered by quoting the very next line while still half-asleep, “Who has people to watch over and a multitude of cares.”

According to Laertius, in his life of Diogenes, Alexander stood over the philosopher and said, “I am Alexander the great king.” To which Diogenes responded, “I am Diogenes the dog.” When Alexander asked what he had done to be called a dog, he said, “I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.”

Legend has it that Diogenes and Alexander died on the same day in 323 BCE, one having conquered the world and thereby extended the reach of Greek civilisation, the other having subverted the norms of civilised society altogether. In 1968, the term Diogenes syndrome was coined. That was also known as senile squalour syndrome. It was also characterised by extreme self-neglect, domestic squalour, social withdrawal, apathy, compulsive hoarding of garbage or animals, plus lack of shame. Sufferers may also display symptoms of catatonia.

In a nutshell, Diogenes represented the voice of the individual and the marginalised. He demonstrated his criticism through action. To me, he was the most liberated soul and quite fascinating, too.

The author is a professor of history and a writer. He can be reached at tahir.kamran@bnu.edu.pk