The aim of this work, which is a translation and adaptation of a 2022 book originally published in Dutch, is to introduce ancient Cynicism through the figure of its most illustrious representative, Diogenes, to an evidently non-specialist audience. This is reflected in the personal style of the exposition, the limited number of notes, and the inclusion of historical and philosophical background elements that would naturally be familiar to an informed or specialist readership. Between Chapters 4 and 5, illustrations related to the subject - photographs of archaeological sites, reproductions of statues, and paintings - help maintain the overall fluidity of the work. This broad outreach objective is highly commendable, and the book's guiding thread, which places corporeality at the center of Diogenes' Cynicism, offers a key entry point for exploring the different facets of his thought and rescuing it from the unserious image long associated with it.

Taking as its starting point the encounter - which the author considers authentic - between Diogenes and Alexander the Great, the book situates the philosopher within his geographical, historical, and cultural context, at the crossroads of Greece and Asia, whose influence Diogenes may have experienced - for example, that of the Scythians through Anacharsis, and possibly Indian thought through oral versions of the Mahabharata.

After presenting Diogenes' Socratic lineage, the author successively examines his critical stance toward Plato (Chap. 2), the central role the body plays in his philosophy, particularly from the perspective of asceticism (Chap. 3), and his challenge to structures of power, especially political power (Chap. 4). On this point, she shows how the accounts of Onesicritus and Plutarch tend to reconcile Diogenes with figures of authority, particularly Alexander, by highlighting the benefit the ruler derives from his relationship with the philosopher, who is thus transformed into a counselor to the prince - a role that, in her view, remains largely unfaithful to Diogenes' actual thought. Chapters 5 and 6 focus respectively on Diogenes' position on slavery - he would have been the only thinker to denounce it in the fourth century BCE - and on his attitude toward death, which the author compares to that of Epicurus, according to whom death is nothing to us. Chapter 7 examines the reception of Diogenes from Antiquity to the twentieth century, passing through the French Enlightenment, with particular attention to Erasmus, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Sloterdijk. The author identifies in Nietzsche a possible source of the transformation of ancient Cynicism - which carried very elevated moral ideals - into contemporary cynicism, which represents its complete opposite. In Chapter 8, she reflects on what a contemporary Cynic figure might look like through a brief presentation of three contemporary artists who claim a more or less explicit intellectual lineage from Diogenes.

One may nevertheless question the success of the undertaking: although the book is enjoyable to read and well structured, it is weakened by the highly questionable portrait it paints of its central figure and his philosophy. It recycles several inaccuracies and clichés - indeed, sometimes outright falsehoods - about Diogenes and Cynicism, as well as about other philosophers. A few examples follow. Let us begin with the portrait of Diogenes. The claim that his "philosophy consisted of intentionally spectacular deeds and equally memorable quips" (12) reduces his philosophy to its theatrical dimension, when Diogenes sought to extend philosophy to life as a whole - that is, also to its non-spectacular moments - as illustrated by his participation in numerous social activities (banquets, the Olympic Games) and by the anecdote of sunbathing.

More troubling is the repeated and often unsupported assertion that Diogenes wrote nothing (12, 68, 162; and on p. 119 concerning his Politeia: "Diogenes did not write this piece," which seems a rather cursory demonstration), as well as the claim that he adopted an anti-intellectual stance (47). On the first point, beyond dismissing without real discussion the testimonies that mention titles of works attributed to Diogenes, and failing to engage for example with the reconstruction work on his dramas carried out by Juan Luis López Cruces and Javier Campos-Daroca on Diogenes' Thyestes[1], the author displays a certain methodological inconsistency: in note 18 on page 68, she criticizes Jean-Manuel Roubineau, author of The Dangerous Life and Ideas of Diogenes the Cynic (Oxford 2023), for disregarding passages in which Diogenes Laërtius reports that, according to some, Diogenes did not write. Yet she herself overlooks section 6.31 of the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, where Diogenes Laërtius also states that Diogenes had his master Xeniades' children memorize various texts, including his own. As for the charge of anti-intellectualism, one may wonder how a philosopher who studied under Antisthenes and then took the trouble to critique Plato, and who quotes Homer and the tragedians, could reasonably be described in such terms.

The doctrinal content of the philosophy attributed to Diogenes also gives rise to serious reservations, particularly on the following three points. First, the author interprets the references to animals found in the anecdotes transmitted by Diogenes Laërtius as an invitation to imitate animal behavior (57, 95), whereas they should rather be understood as models to be transposed into the framework of human life without abandoning the values proper to it - which are, by definition, absent from animal life - as demonstrated by scholarship not taken into account in the book.[2] Along the same lines, the well-worn interpretation of ancient Cynicism according to which one must renounce all social conventions in the name of a return to nature (56, 78, 249) - rather than, as Diogenes himself seems to suggest, examining existing conventional norms in order to reject those that obstruct the exercise of self-sufficiency and to create those capable of promoting it - overlooks the recent scholarly debate surrounding the supposed primitivism of the Cynics, a debate that generally tends toward rejecting that characterization.[3] Finally, Diogenes' alleged "rejection of the city" (193, 256) does not withstand examination of the available testimonies (Diogenes goes to the theatre, attends the Olympic Games, frequents taverns, and lives in the agora), and once again fails to grasp what a philosophy of marginality might entail. Such a philosophy differs significantly from one of withdrawal or renunciation insofar as it still implies, by definition, a form of proximity to that from which it distances itself.

The presentation of other ancient philosophers also frequently suffers from what appears to be second-hand rather than direct familiarity with their texts and thought, resulting in portrayals that are reductive or simply inaccurate. This is especially evident in the treatment of Plato and Epicurus. Regarding Plato, the theory of intelligible Forms is reduced to "the thesis that what we see around us are mere reflections of higher, abstract forms, which are divine" (61), a formulation that fails to convey the epistemological and ontological motivations behind Plato's development of this complex and foundational hypothesis. Likewise, the suggestion that Plato encourages us to "leave our bodies behind" (93; see also 65) offers a strikingly narrow account of the status and significance accorded to the body in Platonic thought - a thought that in this respect shares considerably more with Diogenes than the author appears willing to acknowledge. Finally, by asserting (32) that Socrates says in Plato's Apology (21-23) that he "knew that he knew nothing," the author attributes to him a statement that he simply does not make.

Epicurus receives similar treatment, particularly about his hedonism (a term that is not even mentioned). The author claims that, apart from natural and necessary desires, "All other desires are unnatural and must be unlearned," (96) which is simply incorrect. On the one hand, Epicurus explicitly recognizes the existence of natural but non-necessary desires; on the other hand, Epicurean hedonism rests on the prudent and measured evaluation of desires (Letter to Menoeceus 132), rather than on prohibiting certain desires. Epicurus himself states that "we regard self-sufficiency as a great good, not so that we may in all cases use little, but so that, if we do not have much, we may be content with little [...]" (Letter to Menoeceus 130; emphasis added).

Regarding the content more broadly, one may also question whether the appeal to artistic figures in the final chapter is truly sufficient to imagine a contemporary Diogenes. Quite apart from the fact that Marina Abramović's 2010 performance (The Artist is Present) lags some thirty years behind those of Alberto Sorbelli with respect to bodily engagement in art and its proximity to Cynicism[4], this chapter is also undermined by the extreme depoliticization that affects the book's portrait of Diogenes. As a consequence, it becomes entirely impossible to establish connections with currents of thought such as Murray Bookchin's social ecology or anarchism, that would show Diogenes' political relevance for today.

Finally, the absence of a bibliography is regrettable. Moreover, the sparse secondary literature cited in the notes refers only to William Desmond's work (Cynicism, Stocksfield 2008) - which is highly debatable in many respects - and to Luis Navia's Diogenes the Cynic: The War Against the World (Amherst 2005) as general philosophical sources on the figure of Diogenes the Cynic. The important scholarship of Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé is mentioned only in a relatively marginal way. More significantly, none of the recent scholarship on Cynicism is cited, despite the fact that such work has fundamentally renewed our understanding of the movement through a critical reassessment of Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé's contributions. This includes, among others, the work of Suzanne Husson, Olimar Flores-Júnior, Maxime Chapuis, Stefano Mecci, and Isabelle Chouinard.[5]

The result is a portrait of Diogenes that feels rather flat and lacking in nuance, because it reproduces a series of commonplaces that familiarity with recent secondary literature would likely have avoided.

Notes:

[1] Diogenes' Thyestes, GRBS 64, 2024, 226-250.

[2] See in particular Olimar Flores-Júnior: Cratès, la fourmi et l'escarbot: les cyniques et l'exemple animal, Philosophie antique [En ligne], 5 (2005), online 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/121tg.

[3] In particular Maxime Chapuis: Figures de la marginalité dans la pensée grecque. Autour de la tradition cynique, Paris 2021; Olimar Flores-Júnior: La vie facile. Une lecture du cynisme ancien, Paris 2021.

[4] See Antoni Collot: Tentative de rapport sur Alberto Sorbelli, Art Press, 2024, 524, 42-47.

[5] In addition to the works cited in the previous notes, one may mention, among others, Suzanne Husson: La République de Diogène. Une cité en quête de la nature, Paris 2011; Suzanne Husson / Juliette Lemaire (éds.): Les trois Républiques. Platon, Diogène de Sinope et Zénon de Citium, Paris 2021; Isabelle Chouinard: Une tradition du suicide chez les cyniques, Philosophie antique 20 (2020), 141-164; Stefano Mecci: Diogenes the Cynic and the gods (Diogenes Laertius VI 44 [= V B 322]), Philosophia 50 (2020), 157-163; Stefano Mecci: I Cinici e la ridefinizione dei valori. Il sapiente come modello 'politico' e 'religioso', in: Anna Schino / Francesco Verde (eds.): Filosofia e religione civile, Roma 2023, 21-31.

Étienne Helmer