Philosophers
Diogenes of Sinope
dye-AH-juh-neez of sih-NOH-pee
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An ancient Greek philosopher and the school's most famous exemplar, who took Cynic principles to their most provocative extreme: he lived in a large ceramic jar in the Athenian marketplace, walked the streets by daylight carrying a lit lamp and explaining he was looking for an honest man, and treated shameless public simplicity as a philosophical demonstration that convention, not nature, made most human wants necessary.
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Defining MomentExiled from Sinope for defacing currency, he settled in Athens and made his own homelessness and self-sufficiency into a public philosophical performance, coining the term kosmopolites, citizen of the world, when asked where he was from. 1 TraditionAncient Greek philosophy, Cynicism 1 Disputed
Birth YearAncient sources disagree on Diogenes's exact birth year; c. 412 or c. 404 BCE are both defended. Cross-Tradition Connections
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