Wisdom From Antiquity: Diogenes Holds Up a Chicken
I discussed Diogenes the Cynic in a previous post, but for those who are unfamiliar, he was a philosopher who owned nothing and lived in poverty. There is an anecdote from Diogenes Laertius, who lived several hundred years after the Cynic, about how Plato defined a man as being a featherless biped. Diogenes, having heard of Plato’s definition, entered Plato’s Academy one day holding up a chicken plucked of all its feathers and said, “Here is Plato’s man.”
Diogenes was being comedic, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn. Humor, like philosophy, is concerned with the truth, hence the expression “It’s funny because it’s true.” Diogenes’ joke is funny because he didn’t deviate from Plato’s definition of a man.
Though we can’t say for sure whether Diogenes was making fun of Plato or using humor to teach a lesson, there is a lesson to be learned: definitions need to be specific. While this is a valuable lesson for anyone, since specificity is essential for effective communication, it’s probably most useful for lawmakers, who need to be precise in their definitions to prevent their laws from having loopholes. Despite the lesson, that’s not where Diogenes’ wisdom lies.
Some might argue Diogenes doesn’t show any wisdom in this anecdote, that he’s being clever, not wise, but wisdom and cleverness aren’t mutually exclusive. Put aside the joke and look at what he made fun of and the context of the story. The Cynic was poking fun at Plato’s definition of a man, but where did he perform his joke? In the Academy.
If Diogenes’ goal was to mock Plato, he could have done so by walking around the streets of Athens holding up the featherless chicken and declaring it to be Plato’s man. Far more people would have witnessed his mockery of Plato, but Diogenes chose to perform his joke at the Academy. This could be because Diogenes wanted to mock Plato in front of the people whose opinions he cared about the most. But I don’t believe Diogenes was mocking Plato; instead, I think he was mocking his definition.
Diogenes held up the defeathered chicken and said, “Here is Plato’s man.” While Diogenes uses Plato’s name, he uses it in the possessive, clearly indicating that he was making fun of Plato’s definition. It’s not an attack on Plato’s perceived foolishness; it’s poking fun at a definition that is too broad. Additionally, there is no ad hominem attack, which would likely occur if Diogenes were using the joke to attack Plato rather than his definition.
Combine the definition being attacked with the fact that Diogenes mocked Plato’s definition at the Academy, and you find that Diogenes was being wise by thinking ahead. Plato’s Academy was a place where philosophy was discussed. If philosophers were allowed to give definitions that could be shown to be broader than they appeared to be, as Diogenes did with Plato’s, then people wouldn’t take philosophers seriously. But, more importantly, if philosophers weren’t particular about their definitions, then they wouldn’t be able to determine what is true. By mocking a poor definition, Diogenes had foresight and had the wisdom to act on it.
This might seem a bit of a stretch, but I don’t think it is. If you’ve read Plato before, then you know the people in the dialogues are constantly defining things while asking each other to explain what they mean. This is the Socratic method, and Plato was one of Socrates’ students, so we could say that this is Socrates’ influence on Plato.
However, if the anecdote of Diogenes and the chicken is authentic, then it could have been Diogenes who inspired Plato to be so detail-oriented towards the definitions because he mocked Plato’s definition of a man. Perhaps it was Diogenes’ wisdom and foresight that pushed Plato to be a more meticulous philosopher.
Perhaps I am stretching the point, but regardless, we can all learn to be more specific in our speech when making public statements, particularly those of us who are on social media or writing for a wider audience, like me.
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Perhaps there is another way of looking at this. If I recall correctly, there is a story that Plato may have riposted about Diogenes' pride, and that Diogenes admitted to. This goes to the nature of rhetoric in connection with politics in Gorgias and rhetoric as exchanged by friends in Phaedrus. I recall that Plato had Gorgias relate that rhetoric was an art form without considering rhetoric as a skill in making slaves out of trainers and doctors and getting others to make money not for themselves but for the master of rhetoric. In such way, Gorgias praised rhetoric in a rather flattering manner that praised himself as a trainer of verbal disputants. In fact, Plato proposed that rhetoric is not an art but an artifice of persuasion with those to be persuaded actually persuading themselves to act against themselves. In such way, Diogenes may have praised himself while condemning himself and therefore being unfair to himself as well as the rest of humanity. This may have been a problem faced by the schools of skepticism and stoicism as well. The idea of Hedonism and Epicureanism perhaps is to view a door knob opening the door to pleasure as the good and missing the blandishments of flattery. If the cynics, stoics, and skeptics failed to pick this up, we may be confronted with what Plato called a mistake of the mind in sophist, where people think they know what they don't know and which is handicrafted into folly. The object of conversation, discussion, and discourse look to be part of dialectical science in classification instead of Aristotle's taxonomy which focused on the attributes of parts of life as a whole. That is where my thinking leads me now. If this can be refuted or otherwise improved, please let me know your thoughts.