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Align Your Will with Nature
Diogenes the Cynic sees a mouse, happily running about, not looking for money or prestige, and finds a lesson in the mouse’s behaviour: Diogenes says the gods have given us an easy life but we’ve made it difficult for ourselves by overlaying it with nonsense. Even in Diogenes’ time, to talk of ‘the gods providing’ would be taken metaphorically. This is all the more true in our more secular time. So we can replace ‘the gods’ with ‘nature’ here and the effect is the same. Nature has given us a relatively easy life but we’ve overlaid it with nonsense. We…
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The Courage of Cynicism
I love the Cynics and I wish I were courageous enough to be one. I think they are essentially right in everything they say. A student once expressed surprise at this, when I said as much in a lecture, pointing out that I had celebrated Socrates’ prioritisation of the ethical. Weren’t the two incompatible? Socrates says there is nothing more important than living a decent life; the Cynics go around spitting in people’s faces and generally causing trouble. However you justify it, there’s not much ‘decency’ in Cynic life. I think that’s true, and I was glad to have the…
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Shouting from the Sidelines
I’ve often thought there’s something absurd about a philosopher shouting from the sidelines of society, accusing everyone of being miserable. Most people seem quite content to go about their business; they don’t seem particularly tormented by being in ordinary society; it’s only the philosopher that is. Who is more miserable here? The one who is happy in the world or the one who lives outside of it? But then I look at the brief biographies of famous and successful people, or our leaders, the great and good, the paragons of ordinary society, the pictures of success, and although it is…
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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