.Diogenes of Sinope...

Diogenes of Sinope, d. c.320 BC, was a Greek philosopher, perhaps the most noted of the CYNICS. He pursued the Cynic ideal of self-sufficiency, a life that was natural and not dependent upon the nonessential luxuries of civilization. A student of ANTISTHENES, he is credited with the development of the chreia (moral epigram), with a scandalous attack of convention entitled Republic (which influenced ZENO OF CITIUM), and with tragedies illustrative of the human predicament. Because Diogenes believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory, he made his life a protest against what he thought of as a corrupt society. He is said to have lived in a large tub, rather than house, and to have gone about Athens with a lantern in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man--but never finding one. In later art, Diogenes is often depicted in a torn cloak, with a dog, carrying a lantern. ROBERT S. BRUMBAUGH

Bibliography: Hoistad, Ragner, Cynic Hero and Cynic King(1949).

...and the Cynics

{sin'-iks} The Cynics were adherents of a Greek philosophic school founded in the 4th century BC by ANTISTHENES. Its best-known member was DIOGENES OF SINOPE. Antisthenes held that happiness is achieved by cultivating virtue for its own sake. This is attained, he said, by conducting a life free of dependence on possessions and pleasures.

The Cynics admired SOCRATES for his self-sufficiency and his indifference to unnecessary luxury and possessions. A good life, they taught, involves a return to nature, giving up the decadence of civilized urban life and living simply and strenuously. Their name is generally supposed to come from the Greek kynikos, "doglike," presumably a commentary on their severely critical philosophic style; or it may be derived from Cynosarges, the name of the gymnasium in which the group met under Antisthenes. The Cynics are important in the history of philosophy because of their influence, both in Greece and Rome, on SOICISM. Robert S. Brumbaugh

Bibliography: Copleston, F. J., A History of Philosophy: Greeceand Rome (1962; repr. 1993); Dudley, D. R., A History of Cynicism (1937; repr. 1980); Rankin, H. D., Sophists, Socratics, and Cynics (1983).

The above two quotes are from the Academic American Encyclopedia, available on Compuserve.

Ah, the synch, my friends. Doesn't this sound like the values of Henry David Thoreau as well as some of the Beat Generation or the Digger faction of the Hippies. Looks like Bohemians have been around for quite some time.

In case you're wondering how I made this discovery, it's from Time Magazine. They had a cover story on the Hippies dated July 7, 1967 (Vol. 90 No.1) that attempted to explain the philosophy of the Hippies, and it was probably the best article ever written about the Hippies that ever appeared in the "establishment" press. On the other hand, I don't think Life did a single article on the Hippies, which is strange since we're such a photogenic bunch of people. Actually, I think they did have a story on one of the poster artists and I think they did photograph some of the Pranksters and Kesey's bus (in black and white, see Tom Wolfe's Acid Test book) but that story seemed to wind up on the cutting room floor. Most of the other articles on the Hippies were very negative indeed, but the Time article was the least hostile and you should definitely try to find a copy of it for your archives.

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Believe it or not, here's some sites that deal with all this.

Colin Pringle, ed.
diogenes.htm